Hitting it Big After Years of Rejections: An E-Pub Success Story

While the current “Wild West” world of publishing means authors have alternate ways of finding success, many still pursue the ultimate dream of publication with one of the highly-respected traditional publishers.

Author Theresa Ragan certainly did. The six-time Golden Heart finalist pursued that dream for almost 20 years.

As she tells Joyce Lamb in her USA Today “Happily Ever After” column, “I worked with two agents and a few editors. I joined critique groups and brainstorming groups. I attended writer conferences all over the U.S. I judged contests.”

Ragan says she wrote every day and in many genres, hoping to attract the attention of an editor. But she never received that coveted offer from one of the big traditional publishers.

So, faced with having to find a real job when her youngest daughter headed off to college, Ragan decided to self-publish.

“With nothing to lose, I self-published Return of the Rose and A Knight in Central Park. Instead of selling 10 books, I sold thousands! After nearly two decades of working hard to get published, I felt like an overnight success,” she tells Lamb in the HEA interview.

According to Ragan, she’s sold more than 160,000 books in just 10 months.  

She has published six ebooks. Five of them are available in print, using templates she used through CreateSpace

Click here to read Theresa Ragan’s full interview with Joyce Lamb in USA Today‘s Happily Ever After column.

Amazon Plans to Open Retail Book Store

The king of innovative e-tailing is about to tackle traditional retailing.

Good E Reader reports Amazon plans to open a retail store in Seattle within the next few months. Amazon’s main headquarters is based in Seattle.

The store is seen as a test to gauge whether a chain of Amazon stores would be profitable.

The plan is to go with a small boutique setup which emphasizes books from Amazon’s growing line of titles as well as its e-readers and tablets.

Amazon recently started its own publishing division. However, competitors such as Barnes and Noble and Books-A-Million have already said they will not carry Amazon titles in their stores.

An Amazon retail store provides customers with a way to physically buy books published by Amazon.

According to Good E Reader, Amazon hopes to open the new store in the fall, in time to capitalize on the lucrative holiday season.