My decision to pursue self-publishing was related to Joe as well. Though I'd been publishing with St. Martin's, a lot of decisions were out of my hands. Meanwhile, Joe was starting to have real success with KDP and encouraged me to put a book up through KDP. I published some short stories, sold a couple hundred copies in the first couple months, and decided to publish other works. Finally, last October, things really started taking off for me with two, three, four thousand copies a month. The sales through KDP were far better than I expected - I even got into the top 50! Of course, there are some challenges with independent publishing, but having control over each part of the publishing process makes up for the extra work. I control the cover art, product description, and the price. I feel this has contributed to my success as an author.

How did I get from there to here? One book at a time. This isn't an overnight success story. My first novel, The Jakarta Pandemic, sold a whopping 30 copies in November 2010. I pushed that monthly number into the 40's by the end of December, by sheepishly spreading the word to my "exhaustive" list of a few hundred contacts. Not exactly an explosive start. In January 2011, that number shot into the hundreds with no effort on my part, reaching 2,000 units per month in March. I'd love to take credit for an effective marketing campaign, but Amazon's unique and unparalleled system of recommending books and categorizing similar titles gets all of the credit.

When KDP offered the KDP Select program in late 2011, I didn't hesitate to enroll The Jakarta Pandemic and a recently launched title in my new Black Flagged series. With earnings from the Kindle Owners' Lending Library added in, these books were more profitable than ever. The success of this no-brainer decision continued throughout the year. I'm not sure why it took me another nine months to quit my job.

Not bad for a self-published writer who has never attended a writer's conference or taken a single course on the "craft." My "training" as a writer consists of reading Stephen King's On Writing (several times), joining a supportive writer's group and reading thousands of novels. Hardly a resume you might expect from a full time thriller writer making a comfortable living on 813,000 published words.

As much as I'd like to think my self-publishing story is unique, I know it isn't. Nearly every Indie author has built the bulk of their readership base using KDP, along with innovative programs like KDP Select and Kindle Countdown Deals - still the most robust marketing tools in the industry. I look forward to what KDP brings authors in the near future.