Amanda was hardly 7 years of age, when she started her love affair with books, by the age of 12 she realized that she is meant to do just one thing with her life: write. By the end of her high school, she'd already written about 50 short stories, and numerous novels. Her first novel was "Dreams I Can't Remember", and she finished writing it when she was 17. Now let's fast forward few years, by 2010, Amanda had written about 17 novels...all unpublished.

She has always been an amazingly fast and imaginative fictional writer, all she needs is her dose of Red Bull, that can keep her writing from evening till dawn. When an idea strikes her, she writes non-stop and finishes her novel in 2-3 weeks. But at the end of the day, her novels were nothing but forgotten icons on her desktop.

Like every aspiring author, she submitted her novels to numerous publishers, but only got rejection letters in return. She received so many rejections, that it became a part of her life. She didn't stop writing though, she continued writing one book after another, while juggling with her day job where she worked with severely disabled people. "Sometimes I'd say: 'I'm done, I'm never going to write another book,' but then a couple of months later I'd have another idea and I'd start again. This time it was bound to work." shares the authoress.

Then one day, 'Muppets' happened and it changed her life forever.

A penniless, frustrated and desperate for a break Amanda, found out that there was an exhibition taking place about Jim Henson, the creator of Muppets. Henson was to visit Chicago in few months, but Amanda was short of gas money that she needed for an 8 hour drive and of course couldn't afford a stay in a hotel. She needed $300 and had 6 months to accumulate them. So, what did she do?

Well, she did the smart thing, something that she should've done long time back. She decided to sell her books on Amazon. On 15th April 2010 she made her first book available for Kindle readers on Amazon, with the hope to earn enough money for the Muppets exhibition. Little did she know, that her quest to attend an exhibition will make her a millionaire in matter of months.

"Everything I'd heard about self-publishing is that it was impossible to make a living, reach readers, or produce a quality product. But last year, I heard about how some other authors like Joe Konrath and Karen McQuestion are doing well with ebooks. So I thought that I had nothing to lose. I'd written about 12 books when I decided to self-publish, and I thought it would be better than them sitting on my computer. Worst case scenario, nobody would read them, and that's what was happening anyway."

By January 2011, she'd sold over 185,000 ebooks, with majority of sales coming from Amazon and Barnes & Nobles; she also started selling through Smashwords.com to reach out to other digital platforms like Nook, Sony eReader & iBooks etc. One could say that it was her pricing policy that gave her that initial push in the self-publishing world.

She charged only $0.99 for her first book, a price that most readers won't even give a second thought before buying. Eventually, when she published her other books, she started pricing them at $2.99. It is important to note, that if you sell your eBook for 99 cents on Amazon, you receive 30% of all the royalties, whereas if you charge $2.99 for your book, you will receive 70%; which is drastically higher than traditional form of publishing where you receive hardly 10-15% of the royalties.

Books by Amanda Hocking:































Check out all her books on Amazon.com

Another advantage with Hocking was that she already had a lot of material ready. I mean there were 12 eBooks eating dust on her desktop, and as soon as she found a way to make her novels available to her readers, she had enough material to satisfy their appetite. By November last year, Hocking entered the prestigious Kindle Million Club.

And guess what, all those traditional publishers who filled her shoebox with rejection letters, are now flocking her with big deals and offers. She has recently signed up with a publishing house from US and another from UK for a whopping $2.1m.

Check out this video where Amanda shares her inspiring story:




There are two things that I've learnt from this story:

-People might think that traditional publishing is now a thing of the past, but even a successful eBook writer ends up signing contracts with big publishing houses. So, if you really wanna call yourself a writer or a novelist, then you do need to eventually move out of online publishing.

-Passion, self-belief and determination can still take you places. It may sound clichéd, but it is true. If it wasn't for her passion for writing and self-belief (in spite of receiving endless rejections), Amanda would still have been sipping Red Bulls, churning our unread novels. If it wasn't for her determination to see that Muppets show, in spite of her serious financial problems, she would've never learnt to take matter in her own hands and make sure that she gets what she really wants.

"Write a lot, but read even more. Learn to be open to criticism. And research as much as you can before making a decision about where you want to see your writing career. The internet is filled with information that will help you become a better writer and make better decisions about publishing." - Amanda Hocking

You can learn more about Amanda through her:

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