I started writing all the way back in 1989 and I bounced around between the big six as a mid-list author, selling well enough to not be dropped but yet not relevant enough to be important to them even when I hit the NY Times Bestseller List. I’ve come a long way since then, and started a small publishing company in 2010, but was still with a Big 6 publisher. I made a decision that I was going to go 100% Indie in January 2011 and it really took off once I jumped in. From 347 eBooks sold that month, I ended the year with over 600,000 sold.

I have published over 60 titles and have sold over 6 million books (most since going to eBook). However, self-publishing is not as easy as it seems: It requires your devotion and attention. In my opinion it’s a full time job. Besides the writing, it takes a tremendous amount of time to do the promotion, marketing and technical aspects. I’ve got a few other authors that I’m working with to get out there because they have to focus on the writing and we take care of the business aspects. I have Jen Talty to help me with all the formatting – in fact we even published a book about how we are doing this: How We Made Our First Million on Kindle: The Shelfless Book

I interact with the author community through Kindle Boards and with the readers through Twitter, my blog, appearances and go to other people’s blogs making comments. Joe Konrath and I post on each other’s blogs; we try to build a community of readers. I think the most effective way of marketing my books has been linkage. To give you an example, I had a series (Atlantis) that was similar to the show “Lost” so I linked to the “Lost” page and blogs in a relevant manner and that helped my page’s relevance tremendously from an organic search perspective. I try to link my books to something in media or something in history as I write Factual Fiction—stories based in history and facts with a fictional element thrown in.

I have nothing but good things to say about KDP and Amazon. They have dramatically changed the world of publishing. No longer is distribution controlled by a select few. Readers Rule! I’ve seen Amazon sell motorcycles! I wouldn’t be surprised if they started selling other things no one would have expected, soon. And that’s the key: they’ll figure out how to do it, because Amazon is active rather than reactive. Amazon was founded in 1994 and went online in 1995. Only 17 years online. I ask myself how much have I changed my business model in 17 years? Truly not much until January 2011 when I went 100% indie and committed to the eBook.