Top self-published books in Kindle Store – August 2011

"Blind Faith" by CJ Lyons is at #2 in Kindle Store in August

I’m happy to announce the August list with Kindle Store’s top self-published books.

This list, as well as all published so far (since January 2011), will be compared in a full report for 2011. Check the one for a year’s first half here.

Overview

August is a way better than June or July. The standing is close to the best months – February and March.

There are 26 self-published titles in Top 100, compared to 17 in July. The biggest news is that 4 of them are in Top 10. It happened only once so far, in March, as a result of Hocking-Locke hype. Now the situation is different – we have self-pubbed books selling extremely well without any particular media support.

One condition to include in a landscape is that there are more and more $0.99 books from established publishers like HarperCollins. The competition is going to strengthen, and it looks like it’s not only from other self-publishers.

The big winners in August are CJ Lyons and Rick Murcer. Both of them have two books in Top 100 and both of them very quickly made it to the top. Enough to say, that none of the books by CJ Lyons were present on a list in July. Now Blind Faith is the best self-published book in Kindle Store.

Michael Prescott is strengthening his position with 4 books, same as last month. Barbara Freethy is also doing very well with 3 books. Self-published books highly rotate in Top 100. Stable standing is extremely difficult to achieve and only few authors can manage to do that.

The example of John Locke proves it. Last month he was back with the eight novel from Donovan Creed series, The Love You Crave. It was ranked 30 last month – good for a start. However the book is not doing any better in August.

Compared to self-publishers who jump in and out of the list, well established names – Suzanne Collins, Stieg Larsson or George R.R. Martin – stay in Top 100 for many months.

One more thing. Since July every author can submit original work to Kindle Singles (here’s a submission page). As a result, high quality short forms from self-published authors are reaching Top 100: Crazy Girls by Max Lance and A Predator Priest by David Margolick.

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Self-published books in Kindle Top 100: August 2011

Data collected on September 1st, 2011, from Kindle Store’s August Bestsellers Archive.

# – position in Top 100.

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