Nattering About Amazon and Kindle

Remember Johnny Carson's Carnac the Magnificent shtick? Johnny would hold an envelope up to his forehead and make a prediction.

I don't have a big feathered turban, but I do have an adorable gray cap, and I'm going to make a prediction of my own: Sometime between April 10 and 25, Amazon will announce that Stephen King has been inducted into the Kindle Million Club.

What is the Kindle Million Club, you ask? According to Amazon:

The "Kindle Million Club" recognizes authors whose entire body of work has sold over 1 million copies in the Kindle Store (http://www.amazon.com/kindlestore).

On July 27, 2010, Amazon announced that Stieg Larsson was the first author to achieve Kindle Million Club status.

Exactly three months later, on October 27, 2010, Amazon announced that the collected works of James Patterson had catapulted him into the Kindle Million Club.

Last week, slightly less than three months later, Amazon announced that Nora Roberts had achieved Kindle Million Club status on January 11, 2011.

Do you see a pattern here? I do. By the way, Amazon is scheduled to have its Fourth Quarter earnings conference call on Janu-
ary 27, 2011. While it would be very nice to have such upbeat information to share with the stock analysts, it probably would have stretched the analysts' credulity a bit to have Nora join the Million Dollar Club on the very day that Amazon announces its year end results. Hence the January 11 announcement.

Anyway, that's why I'm betting Stephen King will ring the bell in April.

Over the weekend, I read an article by Steve Windwalker titled "Just How Big is the Kindle Revolution?" Among the things Windwalker said that caught my interest was:

... when you look at the long lists of titles by Roberts and Patterson, it is all the more impressive that Larsson was able to storm the castle with a single trilogy. But there's definitely a lesson here for emerging authors, and it is a lesson that many Kindle Nation faves like Imogen Rose, Scott Nicholson, Paul Levine and J.A. Konrath have learned well: trilogies, series, and multiple titles allows authors great efficiencies when it comes to building exposure for their books.

Go here to read the article.