For most of Prime Day, Amazon’s annual sales bonanza, an unfamiliar face topped the site’s Author Rank page: Mike Omer, a 39-year-old Israeli computer engineer and self-published author whose profile picture is a candid shot of a young, blond man in sunglasses sitting on grass. He was—and at the time of this writing, still is—ranked above J.K. Rowling (No.8), James Patterson (No. 9), and Stephen King (No. 10) in sales of all his books on Amazon.com. His most recent book is ranked tenth on Amazon Charts, which Amazon launched after The New York Times stopped issuing ebook rankings, and which measures sales of individual books on Amazon. (The company does not disclose the metrics behind Author Rank, which is still in beta.)
Omer is one of a growing number of authors who have found self-publishing on Amazon’s platform to be very lucrative. While he may not be as familiar a name as the big authors marketed by traditional publishing houses, and may not have as many total book sales, Omer is making an enviable living from his writing. Sales of his first e-book, Spider’s Web, and its sequels, allowed him to quit his job and become a full-time author. Now, he makes more money than he did as a computer engineer. “I’m making a really nice salary, even by American standards,” he said.
Of course, there are some things that KDP Select doesn’t offer, like printed books and shelf space in bookstores across the country, or a chance to get on the New York Times bestseller lists. But King and Robinson have tried the traditional route, and found it less lucrative than Amazon. In 2016, they published their first book from a “real” publishing house, Carina Press, an imprint of Harlequin, which is a division of HarperCollins. Seeing their book, Everything for Her, on shelves was satisfying—Robinson cried when she saw the book in Barnes & Noble—but working with a traditional publisher was an adjustment. It took nearly a year between the time they finished the book and the time it was published; on Amazon, it usually takes about two weeks. The book was much longer than their traditional works, at 95,000 words, yet the money was about half what it would have been with Amazon. “It felt really prestigious and good for our career,” Robinson said, “but the money wasn’t the same as with Amazon.” They decided, after that experience, to return to self-publishing.
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