Monday, September 03, 2012

I'm In Good Company!




In an ocean of self-published titles, two questions surface: How can readers find quality e-books, and how can authors of quality e-books find readers?

Before Amazon’s Kindle changed the face of electronic publishing, in 2006, 51,237 self-published titles were printed as physical books, according to the data company Bowker. Last year, Bowker estimated that more than 300,000 self-published titles were issued in either print or digital form.

How can readers sift through hundreds of thousands of self-published titles to find quality e-books that will be worth their investment of money and time?

Author collectives such as the recently launched “Killer Thrillers” provide one answer. All 22 Killer Thrillers members are award-winning, bestselling, and internationally published thriller authors committed to bringing high standards and professional quality to their self-published works.

Of the 163 self-published titles currently featured on the Killer Thrillers website, many first appeared in print. Others are original e-books. All are written by talented, experienced thriller authors who’ve proven they know how to tell a ripper of a story by winning major awards, becoming regional, national, and international bestselling authors, and seeing their novels translated and published in other countries. Some of the Killer Thrillers titles have also been optioned for television and film.

New York Times bestselling author David Morrell, christened “the father of the modern action novel” for his iconic creation, John Rambo, lists 15 self-published e-books on the Killer Thrillers website including First Blood, the title that introduced the world to John Rambo, The Brotherhood of the Rose, the basis for a television mini-series, and his other Rambo books.

“I'm in the process of archiving my entire 40-year output of novels, essays, short stories, and non-fiction works as e-publications,” Morrell says. “E-books are wonderful for authors. No more out-of-print titles.”

Killer Thrillers authors include Brett Battles, Raymond Benson, Sean Black, Robert Gregory Browne, Blake Crouch, Karen Dionne, Timothy Hallinan, Katia Lief, CJ Lyons, Bob Mayer, Grant McKenzie, David Morrell, Boyd Morrison, J.F. Penn, Keith Raffel, J.D. Rhoades, Jeremy Robinson, L.J. Sellers, Zoë Sharp, Alexandra Sokoloff, Mark Terry and F. Paul Wilson.

4 comments:

Dana King said...

I don't red a lot of what are currently described as "thrillers," though, as you know, I like your books a lot. I have read a lot of Tim Hallinan and several things by Zoe Sharp, so this is, indeed, good company. Of course, there are others who may be justifiably pump themselves up by noting their inclusion on the same list as you.

Dana King said...

I don;t read a lot of thrillers, either. I never red them. No one should deface a book, no matter what color they choose.

JD Rhoades said...

Heh. Thanks for the kind words.

Fran said...

Are y'all's books only available on Kindle? Or are they available under other venues? I'm specifically thinking of Google e-books (for the moment) and Kobo (soon). I'd love to be able to feature these ebooks on the shop website, but...yeah. Amazon's proprietary and all. But if we can make a splash with these through Indiebound, that'd be wicked cool!