Meet The First Indie Publisher To Sell A Million Kindle Books

Amazon is touting its self-publishing platform today with the announcement that John Locke has become the first independently published author to become a member of the “Kindle Million club,” selling over 1 million Kindle books using Kindle Direct Publishing.

Locke, who has published nine works including “Vegas Moon,” “Wish List,” “A Girl Like You,” “Follow the Stone,” “Don’t Poke the Bear!” and “Saving Rachel.” joins Stieg Larsson, James Patterson, Nora Roberts, Charlaine Harris, Lee Child, Suzanne Collins and Michael Connelly in the Kindle Million Club. Taking a look at Locke’s works (i.e. Now & Then, which pictures a half-naked woman on the cover), it looks like he may not be in line for a Pulitzer, but the milestone is impressive for an independent author.

Kindle Direct Publishing allows anyone to publish and sell e-books to Amazon Kindle users in a number of languages. Books self-published through KDP can also participate in a 70% royalty program. Thousands of books are published on the platform each month.

Unfortunately, Amazon’s KDP program has been hit with massive amounts of spam of late, causing some to call for stricter regulation of what’s published on the platform.