Self-pub, the trend of the year, will it keep its hype?

At last, back after more than two weeks of internet trouble. Telmex, some times its really a pain. But as they say the rich are rich because they do not spend much money. Think thats why, Carlos Slim, the richest man of the world and owner of Telmex is so dam rich. The internet service is moderate. But I am back.

This week I have read several news that have left me thinking so much. News regarding Amanda Hocking,  the USAToday news paper just said that she have sold, just in the month of january the thrilling amount of 450k books of a total of 9 titles. A self-publish author that has gain the attention of the major paper at the USA, this has to tell us something regarding the way this business is done. I wonder if the Big 6 publishing companies and all the people that do not believe that this way of business is a good business, still think of the old fashioned way of doing business. I know that the price of her books range between 99 cts and 2.99 dollars, but let us think how many books she had sold with the prices above 10 dollars that the "big 6" publishers sell. I think that not so much. I will do not do numbers, this have been done in several post at JA Konrath blog. Congratulations Amanda. Here is the link to the news.

Other news I want to refer also is one at NYTimes regarding the amount of eReaders sold the past christmas and how it has been used. Here we see that a good amount of eReaders have been given to Young Adults, and they have boosted the use of it and the numbers of the books sold. Here we see numbers of the Big 6, and they numbers are good. We can also see that a total of 20 million people read a ebook the past year. An other issue is that some schools are starting to allow students to use their ereaders at a specific time, with this some parents realized it would be a good christmas present. So as we read at this news, the YA market is the one that is boosting, at least in January,  the sales.

To be fair with this staggering number of sales in January, we have to remember that the awful weather that we saw helped to boost reading time, hence the boost in sales, I do not think that a "normal" month the sales will be as high as their were, but I do think that this this a well stablished trend, and remember, as the financial analyst say, "trend is your friend". Congratulations to all those self-publish writers out there, you are in the right direction, and special congratulations to Amanda Hawking for those numbers.