Ebook Bestsellers Breakdown: Young adult romance is big

By Laura Hazard Owen  July 13, 2012, paidContent

This weekly feature examines certain ebooks’ paths to bestseller-dom, and highlights bestselling titles that are selling more copies in digital than in print.

Slammed by Colleen Hoover
Hoover’s first book, Slammed, is self-published and hits the NYT ebook fiction bestseller list this week at #13. The young adult romance tells the story of an 18-year-old girl, Layken, whose family has to move across the country after her father’s death. When Layken meets her new neighbor, Will, romance and challenges ensue.
Hoover tells me, “I hadn’t written anything in the past ten years until December [2011], when I got the idea for Slammed.” The book took a month to write and she uploaded it to Amazon on January 1, 2012 “to get it out there for friends and family. I never intended to make money off of it or for it to even turn into anything.”
How the book hit the NYT list: Hoover says, “Every single day of this whole experience has been a huge shocker.” At first, she spread the word about the book on message boards and Facebook. In March, popular romance book blogger Maryse reviewed Slammed (here’s her review) and the book took off.
What’s next: Hoover has released a Slammed sequel, Point of Retreat, on February 24. She’s working on a standalone novel, Fall Together, and a version of Slammed written from Will’s point of view.
Slammed is $2.99 on … Amazon Kindle | Barnes & Noble Nook | Smashwords

And don’t miss…

• The 50 Shades of Grey trilogy, which started out as self-published Twilight fan fiction and was bought by Random House’s Vintage in a seven-figure deal in March, is set to hit 20 million copies sold in the United States this week, with sales roughly split between print and digital formats. The Wall Street Journal reports that 31 million copies of the trilogy have been sold in English-language markets around the world.
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• Note Carole Radziwill’s What Remains (Simon & Schuster/Scribner) at #35 on the NYT ebook nonfiction bestseller list. The book, Radziwill’s memoir, was first published in 2005. It’s hit the ebook list this week because Radziwill appears on the current season of Bravo reality show “Real Housewives of New York.” Brian Belfiglio, director of publicity at Scribner, says the ebook’s fast sales “simply reflect the format’s immediate accessibility, even as we went back to press to satisfy increased demand for the paperback edition at retail.”