Stephen King Success Story: The Journey Of A Bestselling Author

With over 350 million novels sold, Stephen King is a real success story. It is more of a rags-to-riches success story for a man who was raised by a struggling single mother. For a time, this master storyteller  his brother and mother had to live off handouts from neighbors. As he says:

“My mother was a single parent. Her husband deserted her when I was 2, and she went through a lot of menial jobs. We were the little people. We were dragged from pillar to post, and there was none of this equal opportunity stuff going on at that time. We were latchkey kids before there were latchkey kids, and she was a female wage earner when, basically, women did scut work and cleaned up other people's messes.”

Stephen King was far from an overnight success. Although he started writing early in his life he had a long way to go before becoming the multi-million dollar writer that he is today. Early on, he was a struggling author, and as the earnings from his writings was not enough, he had to work as an industrial laundromat, a janitor and an English teacher in a public school. He struggled to pay his bills and wrote whenever he could.

Stephen King’s success story took a turn for the better when he finished writing the manuscript for Carrie. For this, he received a $2500 advance. The book did not disappoint when it got published. In fact, it was so successful that it ended up being adapted into a movie in 1976. That was not the best part though. The phone call that informed him of the sale of the rights to New American Library was. King was to get half of the $400,000 sale price!

What followed was a rollercoaster ride that saw Stephen King write over 50 novels. The novels have earned Stephen King both money and awards. He has over the years received: Bram Stoker Awards, World Fantasy Awards, British Fantasy Society Awards, an O. Henry Award, a Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, the Canadian Booksellers Association Lifetime Achievement Award and the Grand Master Award. His is an inspiring success story for aspiring writers.

Stephen King Success Quotes

Amanda Hocking Self Publishing Success Story: The 26 year Old Indie Author Bestseller

Amanda Hocking sold over 185, 000 books between July 2010 and January 1^st 2011. That is in less than 7 months! This is no mean feat for someone who had worked as a dishwasher and who had spent five and a half of her years working in group homes for the disabled just to pay the bills. This is also in addition to the fact that she had never been traditionally published. Her journey to becoming a self publishing success story was not easy though. Here is her journey as an indie author.

Amanda Hocking admits that she has always had a love for telling stories. As a kid, she told stories even before she could learn how to write. She started with writing on notebooks and by the time she got her first computer at age 11, she had enough material to write a novel.

Since Amanda’s dream and passion was writing, she took advantage of every opportunity she had to write and learn how to write. She attended English classes in high school, English and writing classes in community colleges and even attended a writing workshop for two years. This was while she still held a day job as a dishwasher and worked in group homes for people with disabilities, just to be able to pay her bills.

July was not her first attempt to be published. By then, she had written 12 books and she had been trying to get published for almost 8 years, getting rejection after rejection. When she finally heard about self-publishing, she chose to try it out simply because there was really nothing worse that could happen. She first published on Lulu, but that was not where her success story began to take a turn for the better. None of her eBooks at Lulu sold.

Her efforts at self publishing on Lulu proving to be no success, she later decided to self-publish on Kindle. That is when she started selling. By August 2010, she had sold enough copies to leave her day job and concentrate on her passion which is basically to write. Amanda Hocking’s success story continues to inspire many aspiring authors. This is in addition to the inspiration that she gives her readers through her books.