Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Aug 25, 2020 1:22:37 GMT
I was reading an old pdf from a scammy kindle course, and they mentioned Amanda Hocking, and that made me wonder how she was doing, and what was new with her. In case you're new to the indie world and don't know who she is, here's a guardian article about her from when she became famous.
www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jan/12/amanda-hocking-self-publishing
Amanda worked very, very hard for her success. She was working full time, and staying up all night, writing from 8 eight pm to dawn, and she had completed seventeen books before deciding to self publish on amazon. So while, yes, she is most definitely an inspiration, it's wrong to use her story to convince gullible people that publishing is easy, and that anyone can do it. Most people are not willing to put in all that work, or be that patient before publishing.
She'd been writing novels since she was seventeen, trying to be trad published, so she put in her million words and got better and better with each new novel. She didn't slap together one nanowrimo novella and publish it. She paid her dues and was rewarded.
So now that you're all caught up on who we're talking about let's go catch up with her and see what she's doing now in 2020.
So I went to amazon and looked her up. She is still writing and publishing new books. She had a new one come out this month, in fact. I saw that she's no longer indie though, and is being published by MacMillan. So that's kind of sad, but as long as she's happy with the arrangement, that's what matters.
I looked at her book ranks:
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #326,599 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
#3756 in Teen & Young Adult Romance eBooks
#1525 in Teen & Young Adult Paranormal Romance
#2313 in Teen & Young Adult Paranormal & Urban Fantasy eBooks
I'm not certain how good or bad these are. Probably with the amount of books out there on amazon, being in the top 1,000's, and being under 5,000's is probably still pretty good. It's not 2011, millionaire Amanda, good, but I doubt anyone could keep up ranks like that forever. All-in-all, I think we could still call her quite successful. Even just still writing after all these years is a success, by itself.
Her amazon author page is here, if you're interested. She has some gorgeous covers!!!
www.amazon.com/Amanda-Hocking/e/B003H4L762?ref_=dbs_p_ebk_r00_abau_000000
And here's her author website.
hockingbooks.com/
One thing I noticed is that she does not have an email list. But maybe her publisher doesn't want her to. I don't know. She used to post on Kboards, in her early days. You can look her up there and revisit 2010-2011, and bask in the glow of the gold rush days. I think if she had begun publishing in 2020, that she would still have seen success, but maybe not as much, and she would likely still be self publishing rather than having the opportunity to go trad. But that's just speculation.
www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jan/12/amanda-hocking-self-publishing
Amanda worked very, very hard for her success. She was working full time, and staying up all night, writing from 8 eight pm to dawn, and she had completed seventeen books before deciding to self publish on amazon. So while, yes, she is most definitely an inspiration, it's wrong to use her story to convince gullible people that publishing is easy, and that anyone can do it. Most people are not willing to put in all that work, or be that patient before publishing.
She'd been writing novels since she was seventeen, trying to be trad published, so she put in her million words and got better and better with each new novel. She didn't slap together one nanowrimo novella and publish it. She paid her dues and was rewarded.
So now that you're all caught up on who we're talking about let's go catch up with her and see what she's doing now in 2020.
So I went to amazon and looked her up. She is still writing and publishing new books. She had a new one come out this month, in fact. I saw that she's no longer indie though, and is being published by MacMillan. So that's kind of sad, but as long as she's happy with the arrangement, that's what matters.
I looked at her book ranks:
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #326,599 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
#3756 in Teen & Young Adult Romance eBooks
#1525 in Teen & Young Adult Paranormal Romance
#2313 in Teen & Young Adult Paranormal & Urban Fantasy eBooks
I'm not certain how good or bad these are. Probably with the amount of books out there on amazon, being in the top 1,000's, and being under 5,000's is probably still pretty good. It's not 2011, millionaire Amanda, good, but I doubt anyone could keep up ranks like that forever. All-in-all, I think we could still call her quite successful. Even just still writing after all these years is a success, by itself.
Her amazon author page is here, if you're interested. She has some gorgeous covers!!!
www.amazon.com/Amanda-Hocking/e/B003H4L762?ref_=dbs_p_ebk_r00_abau_000000
And here's her author website.
hockingbooks.com/
One thing I noticed is that she does not have an email list. But maybe her publisher doesn't want her to. I don't know. She used to post on Kboards, in her early days. You can look her up there and revisit 2010-2011, and bask in the glow of the gold rush days. I think if she had begun publishing in 2020, that she would still have seen success, but maybe not as much, and she would likely still be self publishing rather than having the opportunity to go trad. But that's just speculation.
