Richard Bach, the best-selling author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, has published Illusions II exclusively as a Kindle Single and has gone straight to the top-seller spot in the Singles chart.
The Singles section is open to all and indie authors can submit their work to Amazon for consideration, with the added bonus of getting 70% royalties at all price points for Singles.
“It’s a thrill to have a writer of Richard’s influence publish his work as a Single,” says David Blum, editor of Kindle Singles. “Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions were iconic books that touched millions of readers. This new Single marks the return of an important American voice.”
Bach says: “I never planned to write a follow-up to Illusions but after I was very nearly destroyed in an accident aboard my seaplane, I wondered if it were not an accident at all, but a test. Kindle Singles gave me the opportunity to share my story immediately.”
Kindle Singles was three years old last month and has nearly 500 titles on sale.
Apart from the obvious marketing potential of being included in the Singles section, authors can be paid 70% royalties even if their book is priced below $2.99, which would usually qualify only for 35% payments.
The top-selling Singles are often dominated by big-name authors such as David Baldacci, Lee Child, Barbara Taylor Bradford, Michael Connelly and Nelson De Mille with spin-off short stories starring their series characters or prequels to a forthcoming full-length novel but non-fiction is also popular and self-published authors and indie publishers have done well with fiction and non-fiction works.
A few of the indie Singles successes include:
- This Would Drive Him Crazy: A Phony Oral History of J.D. Salinger by Tom Ruprecht
- False Economies by Gordon Haber
- The Secret Agent: In Search of America’s Greatest World War II Spy by Stephan Talty
- Attempted Hippie by David Noonan.
- The Devil of Williamsburg by Allison Yarrow
- Muder in the Yoga Store by Peter Ross Range
Amazon will consider ebooks which have been recently published through Kindle Direct Publishing, manuscript submissions or pitches.
The main criteria for submission as Singles are:
• Length: 5,000 to 30,000 words
• List price: $0.99 to $4.99
• Original work, not previously published in other formats or publications
• Self-contained work, not chapters excerpted from a longer work
• Not published on any public website in its entirety
• No public domain works, reference books, story collections, travel guides or children’s books.
Send an email to kindle-singles@amazon.com with the book’s title, ASIN (if applicable) and a brief summary.
If the work hasn’t been published yet, you can submit a manuscript or a detailed pitch. Send as much material as you can to kindle-singles@amazon.com withyour name and a writing sample.
All manuscripts submitted as attachments should be accompanied by a cover letter with a detailed summary of the submission.
Amazon says each submission is carefully reviewed by their editors and they will read and respond within six weeks.
Writers retain all rights to their work in Kindle Singles.