Amazon Publishing has snapped up a writing duo who had great success self-publishing but whose sales faltered when they were taken on by Harper Collins.
Thomas & Mercer, Amazon’s thriller and crime imprint, will publish From the Cradle, the first in a new series of thrillers by Mark Edwards and Louise Voss.
The first two thrillers by Edwards and Voss, Killing Cupid and Catch Your Death, were big hits when they self-published them and they became the first UK indie authors to reach No 1 in both the Amazon Kindle and Amazon Fiction charts.
Harper Collins then took on the pair, paying a six-figure sum for four books, including Killing Cupid and Catch Your Death, but they have failed to repeat the initial self-publishing success.
Edwards already has a solo deal with Thomas & Mercer after The Magpies sold 170,000 copies last year.
The two writers have more solo books coming out this year, with Edwards’s What You Wish For being published in March and Voss’s The Venus Trap in the spring. Edwards will also be seeing Thomas & Mercer publish his book Because She Loves Me in the autumn plus a short story.
The duo say: “We are firm believers in the growing power that authors now have thanks to self-publishing and the options that authors have to mix self- and traditional-publishing. For us, the most important thing is to connect with readers and keep writing books they enjoy. We are very excited by this next step in our careers, both together and solo.”