John Lock just sold 1 Million books on Amazon…and he did it all on his own through the Kindle Direct Publishing program.  Last week, John Locke, a self described niche marketer, has become the first independent author to sell more than 1 million ebooks through the Kindle Direct Publishing program.

According to this Mashable article, John Locke attributes his success to the $0.99 pricing model, which allowed him to sell 1 million ebooks and document his journey in his book How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months.

If you do the math, Locke is earning approximately $0.35 for each ebook sold.  This adds up to a total of $350,000 that he pockets for himself for the million ebooks that he sold.

The best part is that he is doing it all himself through Kindle Direct Publishing.  (read more about John Locke in this guest post interview here)

The better part is that YOU can be doing the same thing as well.

Publishing Then and Now

I remember many years ago, as a young teenager, I had aspirations of becoming a writer.  I had drafted up some short stories.  But the difficulty was how to become published?

I read up on the subject.  I bought a huge book that listed the addresses of potential publishers and read up on how to send out a query letter.

Then came the tedious process of drafting an introduction letter to the publishers and sending out my short story, hoping for someone to pick up the story.

After that, there was weeks of waiting.  And waiting.

Being a young high school student I was the impatient sort to begin with, but I remember coming home every day to check the mailbox for what felt like an eternity.

Then after months of waiting, I came home one day to find an acceptance letter!

Yes!  My heart cried out!

The publisher was actually a small science fiction magazine.  If I remember right, they offered my the magnificent sum of $25 to publish my short story.

I jumped on the chance right away and weeks later, I cashed the $25 check.

It took me the better half of a year to sell that story.  And in the end, I had ended up selling the complete rights to that story for $25.

Later on, as the shine of my publishing success was wearing off, I recall thinking that I earned more by working one afternoon in my waitering job that I did selling that story.

The prospect of going through that process once again dampened my enthusiasm for publishing, and frankly being a teenager, my interests turned to more prurient pursuits….

Years later, I’ve recently discovered the joy that is the Kindle Direct Publishing program, which allows independent authors to quickly and easily publish their ebooks within days.

You can read about publishing through Kindle Direct Publishing in my tutorial about how to publish an ebook on Amazon kindle.

That’s right!

An independent author can now take their completed book and upload it in electronic format via Kindle Direct Publishing and have their completed ebook appear in the Amazon store within 24 hours.

Talk about change!

The other benefit is that authors are earning more through Amazon than ever before.

Royalties from selling a kindle book range between 35% to 70%.

Even at the lower end at 35%, authors are earning more than in the past.

This system is a virtual goldmine for the aspiring author.

If you are an aspiring author and have a manuscript on your computer waiting to be sold, what are you waiting for?

It may be time to bypass the traditional publisher and go independent.  The process is much simpler and the profit margins greater.

Putting Together Your eBook

Perhaps, you are a writer hopeful.  An aspiring novelist, whose works have yet to be drafted, or you are simply curious to break into the writing arena.

The Kindle Direct Publishing program provides a great platform for you to experiment in the writing medium without risk to yourself.

The hardest part is coming up with an ebook to sell.

If you are the creative sort, then you may already have an idea for a story ruminating in your head and it’s just a matter of putting the metaphoric pen to paper.

But for the new writer, perhaps it takes some practice to get those creative juices flowing.

Then I would suggest taking your time and coming up with the material slowly.

Starting a blog is good practice for writing in short spurts.  You can then take several posts and put them together into a book.

Each post topic can be expanded and turned into a separate chapter.

The other method that allows you to expand your horizons and publish more variety is to use some PLR materials as a foundation for your books.

Using PLR articles as source materials for Ebooks is a method that I’ve found gives me good practice in editing and putting an ebook together.  You can take separate articles on a topic and edit them, putting them together into a single book.  This way, your process is more of being an editor, rather than coming up with the source material yourself.

I’ve also found that it is a way to quickly break into the ebook market and publish books and earn some profit as you continue writing your other original Ebooks.

Here’s how it works:  for example, you can pick up one of my PLR article packs from our store and pick one of the included niches, such as Investing.

You’ll find that the article packs will have hundreds of PLR articles on a particular niche that will discuss all different aspects of investing.

Then follow these simple steps and put together an ebook quickly:

• Download a PLR article pack.  (You can find these by searching the web, but I have several available in our store.  for example:  You can get 55,000 PLR articles for only $4.95.)
• Find an introductory article on the topic for the introduction of your ebook.
• Then look through the articles and pick out different topics that you wish to include in your ebook as chapters.
• Take all the articles and put them together into a single document, make sure that you label the different articles as chapters.
• Then edit for grammar and punctuation (I also go through a short rewriting process to ensure flow)
• Take the completed ebook and paste it into the blank ebook template. (download blank ebook template)
• Now, create an ebook cover.  I use the web service:  My Ecover Maker, which allows me to create a 3D ebook cover in minutes using preset templates and images.  You can even upload your own images.  You can try it now for free.
• Now you’re done, just follow the steps in my Kindle Publishing Tutorial to complete the process of publishing your book.

I would suggest that using the PLR method is a great way to put out many good ebooks quickly.

My recommendation is that it is better to take PLR articles and put them together into an ebook, rather than taking a completed PLR ebook and trying to re-sell it.  This way your e-book will still have an element of originality and it will be unique when it shows up in the Amazon store.

My second thought is that you can and may want to publish these eBooks under a pen name, which Amazon allows.  You simply come up with an original pen name and fill that in as an author.  As these works are a compilation of PLR materials, they will be decent books, but you may want to save your own name for completely original works of art.

Thirdly, editing and binding together these PLR materials is good practice to getting the creative juices flowing as you work on your own original material.

Finally, it’s not a bad way to earn some extra profit and avoid becoming the next starving author.

So, what are you waiting for?

Start publishing!