Amanda Hocking

The founders of Inkshares don’t think the traditional publishing industry is broken, just antiquated and inefficient — and they think marrying crowdfunding and the kinds of services publishers used to offer makes for a pretty compelling service for writers and ultimately for readers as well

Without a doubt, book publishing is an industry in a state of flux, but even the nature of the flux is up for grabs. Take a recent example of the traditional tech-journalism take on the situation, an article by Evan Hughes for Wired magazine, titled “Book Publishers Scramble to Rewrite Their Future.” The facts in the story are indisputable, but the interpretation? Not so much.

The news peg is the success of a self-published series of post-apocalyptic science fiction novels, “Wool,” by Hugh Howie. Available as e-books and print books from Amazon…

Three and a half years ago, I had an e-reader unwillingly thrust upon me.  I ignored it at first; shunned it.  Then one day I was packing for a long trip and it came on me in a flash that if I used the damned thing I wouldn’t have to limit myself to five pounds of books in my luggage. Since then I read more ebooks than physical books. I buy a lot more books, too. Last year I noticed that books were getting cheaper, but the writing was getting worse.

What do Amazon's Kindle, Barnes & Noble's Nook and Apple's iPad have in common? What about authors like Stephen King, Barbara Freethy, C.J. Lyons, Amanda Hocking and Michael Prescott? If you said they represent the changing book publishing industry, you would be right. The book business is going through a major transformation. Who will the winners and losers be among publishers, stores and authors?

Just as the iPod changed the music industry a decade ago, e-books are changing the publishing world right now.

Several predictions have stated that 2012 will be “The Year of the Indie Author”. After all, 2011 saw some awfully big moments. John Locke became the first indie to break the Kindle million-seller mark. Amanda Hocking, Queen of the indie vampire books, signed a ginormous contract with St. Martins Press. And The New York Times deigned to include indies on their best seller list, where every week at least one title - often more - are contained.

FutureBook’s Philip Jones had the chance to talk with self-publishing star Amanda Hocking, whose move to a $2 million traditional publishing deal with St. Martin’s Press caused some controversy in self-publishing circles last year. In the interview, she confirms that Amazon actually made a higher monetary bid to publish her books, but she was concerned [...]