"How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months" (updated)

How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months, book (kindle or paperback).

I'm not done with the book yet, but it is promising, and I know at least several of my readers are aspiring writers, so I thought I'd mention it.

John Locke takes a very entrepreneurial approach to writing, even fiction. Find a very specific niche audience, write exactly to them, and find them and market exactly to them. And it seems that he might become as successful a writer as he has been in his earlier various businesses, which were all very lucrative.

One might find it very art-less to write books this way. But OK, I think any artist has to decide for himself the relative priority of things. Do I do it for Art's sake, or do I do it for Money's sake? And the two do not lock out each other, some of the best books in the world wouldn't have been written if the author had not been hungry and behind on the rent.

It's also very illustrative when Locke tells about all the money and time he used to use on scatter-shot marketing which didn't sell any books at all: radio shows, blogs, press releases, etc etc. Basically all the things people generally do. They reach a host of people, but only a tiny percentage of these people are in the target audience.

Update:
It's illustrative of his distance to the "Art" author, that he thinks that one should not really begin to think seriously about marketing until one has a handful of books to promote! Because when they want more, they must have something to buy!
But for the guy who struggles five years to write one novel, that's hard words to hear.