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Elaine Pofeldt Contributor

I cover the growing wave of one-person businesses and their ecosystem full bio →

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

I'm a former senior editor at Fortune Small Business magazine. I have written about entrepreneurship for publications such as Crain's New York Business, Fortune, Money, Inc., Working Mother, CNBC and many others. I'm also co-founder of 200kfreelancer.com, a community for indie professionals looking to build a thriving business.

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Entrepreneurs 1,502 views

What You Can Learn From A Future J.K. Rowling

Like many writers, I worry about the decline of reading in an era of digital devices that whittle away our attention span.

But statistics released this month by the American Association of Publishers offered some encouraging news about the American book market. U.S. trade publishers’ revenue was up 6.2% for calendar year 2012, compared to 2011. There were increases in adult fiction and nonfiction and in children’s and young adult books.  The data comes from 1,193 publishers.

One driver of the growth, as you might have guessed, is ebooks. They made up 23% of publishers’ sales in 2012, up from 17% in 2011.

If you’ve been considering writing a book–or looking to kindle some recognition for a project that hasn’t yet gotten its due–this could be your moment.

It took Princess Sophie Audouin-Mamikonian 17 years to find a publisher for her now twelve-book Tara Duncan fantasy novel series before a publisher in France, where she lives, made the leap in 2003. It was only after Harry Potter took off that, she says, “everyone came to me.” (In case you’re wondering, she is, in addition to being a writer, she is Crown Princess of Armenia).

The series has since sold millions of copies around the world and, thanks to the author’s energetic efforts, was made into an animated series in France. The Tara Duncan animated series, which was produced by Moonscoop, Disney and M6, is now also available to some 40 million digital cable television households in the U.S on the Kabillion Girls Rule Video on Demand channel.

Despite the popularity of the book series, the author says that it’s been hard to get recognition in France, where the focus is on authors for the adult market. “The French don’t talk about writers like me,” she says.

To expand her audience, she’s going after the U.S. book market. “I want to become the new sensation,” she says. Two of her books, Tara Duncan and the Spellbinders, and Tara Duncan and the Forbidden Book, have recently been published in the U.S. as a result of a deal she signed with Skyhorse Publishing, and she’s been doing book signings in the U.S.

“I’m an entrepreneur,” she explains.

I seldom heard comments like this from writers in the past. They left the business side of their work to publishers and agents. But at a time when even David Mamet is trying self publishing, I’m hearing it more. Authors realize that by taking an active role in the success of their books, they can reach more readers. An infusion of their creativity to the marketing process could be good news for books–and reading in general.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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