Amazon offers two platforms for self-published authors, the first being the Kindle Direct Publishing site that helps authors post their works to the Kindle store as ebooks, the second being the print-on-demand service CreateSpace. While both platforms help self-published authors make their books available to a larger public at little or no cost to themselves, their focus is about developing two distinctly different versions of the same book.
Romance author Theresa Ragan, a featured author through the CreateSpace platform who also publishes her mystery and thriller titles under the name T. R. Ragan, spoke to GoodEReader at BookExpo America last week about how both options are ideally suited for self-published authors. In the case of Ragan, who actually sold over 250,000 ebooks in her first year of indie publication, the attention her books received in terms of sales led to a contract for her books to be published by Thomas & Mercer, the mystery imprint of Amazon’s traditional publishing house, Amazon Publishing.
Ragan is one of the authors who has discovered that garnering a fan base for her indie works is what led to the attention of a larger, traditional publisher. “Self-publishing used to be the end of your career, but for me it’s been just the beginning.”
Mercy Pilkington is a Senior Editor for Good e-Reader. She is also the CEO and founder of a hybrid publishing and consulting company.
