Independent Author Rides Amazon Technologies To Success

PRLog (Press Release) – Mar 28, 2008 – Novelist April L. Hamilton launched her career in authorship using Amazon.com publication technologies exclusively, a move that appears to be paying off now that her books are rising up the Amazon bestseller ranks. Says Hamilton, “Editors at the big publishing houses loved my work, but apparently didn’t see enough potential for commercial success in it. After entering my comic novel Adelaide Einstein in Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Award contest and receiving 36 very positive customer reviews, I decided to publish the book independently.” The first step in Hamilton’s approach was using Amazon’s free Digital Text Platform™ to publish Kindle editions of both “Adelaide” and another of her novels, “Snow Ball”. After racking up some sales and positive reviews on the Kindle editions, Hamilton released both novels in print-on-demand, trade paperback editions using Amazon’s CreateSpace™ service. “On Amazon,” Hamilton said, “reviews and sales figures are carried across all editions of a book: Kindle, paperback, audiobook and so on. My release strategy ensured the trade paperbacks would have sales figures and positive reviews the first day they went on sale.” Asked why she chose to use Amazon technologies exclusively, Hamilton replied, “I decided early on that brick-and-mortar store presence would not be part of my marketing plan. Amazon is the #1 bookseller worldwide and #2 in North America, so limiting my sales to Amazon didn’t seem very limiting at all, but it did mean that high visibility on Amazon would be critical to my success. Since Amazon’s DTP™ and CreateSpace™ are tightly integrated with Amazon’s sales and customer reviews databases, these services were simply the shortest distance between my books and instant, worldwide exposure and availability on Amazon.com.”