28 Out of 100 Top Kindle E-books Are Self-Published

After a February excitement about Amanda Hocking earning millions of dollars from Kindle Store, I wanted to check how self-published authors are doing a couple of weeks later. From a Kindle Store list of top 100 e-books I’ve selected those ones, which were published by the authors themselves.

It was not an easy task, as some of the titles were given a publisher label. I googled the companies behind the names. If they were clearly associated with the author, for example published only that author’s books, I included them in the list.

The list is based on yesterday’s Kindle Store ranking (US localization). You can check it at Ebook Friendly (where I plan to post such lists frequently): Top Self-Published Books In Kindle Store – April 21st, 2011.

Interesting numbers:

– 28 out of 100 top e-books in Kindle Store are self-published; 11 are in top 50,
– all of those publications are priced $3.99 or less; that means 28% of top Kindle e-books cost less than $4,
– 18 of the titles are given the lowest possible price tag: $0.99,
– the shining star is John Locke with 8 titles (7 of them in top 50); Vegas Moon is the best self-published book – ranked #4,
– Amanda Hocking is sliding down; her best selling book, Ascend, is #64 (a result of signing a contract with a publisher?),
– authors to watch: Heather Killough-Walden, Julie Ortolon, J.R. Rain and Debbi Mack – with 2 or more titles in top 100.