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Comment by rubidium | Hacker News Reader

I wonder: was his working-like-a-dog to self-promote was necessary so that he could be successful with ebooks? He clearly started to establish a name for himself before his massive success with digital sales. Note that he is in the top 10 Mystery and Thrillers for free ebooks on Amazon. I'm guessing his prior reputation helped with that.

I would think that hustling is still needed for new authors to break through, probably including both relentless web and in-person self-promotion. But, I have no info on that. Anyone know?

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Amanda Hocking is probably the best example right now of an author who made it big through ebooks without having been published traditionally first.

She does have a blog [1] and promotes herself quite heavily through social networks, but she's never had the support of a big publishing house that Konrath had.

She's far from being an overnight success though - in an interview with the Huffington Post [2], she explains how she's been writing fiction constantly from the earliest age, attending every possible writing courses along the way.

1: http://amandahocking.blogspot.com/ 2: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tonya-plank/meet-mega-bestsell...

Part of it's also the fact she has a LOT of books out there, the more material you have the higher chance someone discovers you and if you write well enough, they'll love your stories and start buying them all up. THAT is how an author makes a living at it without being a lottery, create enough content that fans can keep buying while picking up a few new readers here and there.

This topic comes up in a lot of his other blog posts. He cites both never-published-before authors, and already published authors using pen names being successful.

However, I don't really see how an unknown name can become successful without self-promotion just by putting a book "out there". They would have to get insanely lucky and get a high profile review without soliciting it.

Agreed. The smart authors who are going indy are having to think of themselves as entrepreneurs not just writers. Making contacts, delegating tasks that aren't to their strength (covers is a very good example here), promoting their work, it's all part of the package as an indy, because they are making themselves a publisher.

Sadly many don't get that and still want to JUST write, but I think Konrath and a few others who are busting their ass or at least used to will get through to a lot of the rest, and the others will either get lucky or fail.

You would still think this would scale better online than doing the promotion in person. Also the publisher is there to make a profit so presumably an author can spend the same amount on promotion a publisher would have spent for them and still get a better return.

Maybe the answer is more akin to how bloggers gain a big following, writing shorter stuff regularly. Maybe if you started telling a story online in this format you could gain a following for your first full length novel.

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