Yesterday the Kentucky-based indie author John Locke (no relation to the father of Liberalism or the character on Lost) officially sold over one million e-books, making him the first self-published author to perform such a feat. His best known work, Saving Rachel, was released in late March and has been selling like gangbusters ever since, though we have to admit we’ve never heard of him until now. And yet, as his Amazon page boasts: “Every 7 seconds, 24 hours a day, a John Locke novel is downloaded somewhere in the world.” Who knew? We certainly didn’t. Click through to read the other authors in the ever-growing Kindle Million Club.
Stieg Larsson
In July 2010, Larsson was unsurprisingly the first author to reach a million sales on Kindle. His posthumous “Millennium Trilogy” includes The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo , The Girl Who Played with Fire , and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest , and stars a frowzy middle-aged journalist with a predilection for badass, damaged ladies. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, chances are you’ve at least seen one or all of these books during your daily commute or have read about Lisbeth Salander’s bondage gear and ability to hack into her bosses’ computers.
James Patterson
The prolific king of the stand-alone thriller can seemingly do no wrong, at least in terms of profits. Patterson also hit the one million mark in ebook sales last July, and has sold over 2 million since then, making him an unstoppable force in both print and online publishing, despite Stephen King’s protestations. Patterson’s latest collaboration with Michael Ledwidge,Now You See Her, will be released on June 27th.
Nora Roberts
Roberts passed the one million mark this past January, and her romance empire keeps expanding. She’s written over 200 romance novels, and also has two pseudonyms: J.D. Robb and Jill March. Moms everywhere can’t wait to read books with names like Irish Hearts and Chasing Fire .
Charlaine Harris
Harris is the author of the popular Sookie Stackhouse books, which, as you may know, was the basis for the HBO’s True Blood. She’s from the Mississippi River Delta and bases a lot of her work in the South; the Stackhouse series started in 2001, and ten years later, it’s still selling like hot cakes. You can read our predictions for Season 4 — which premieres this Sunday night — here.
Lee Child
Child, né Jim Grant, is the author of a series of novels featuring Jack Reacher, a stoic US Army police officer with an appetite for brutality and an uncanny ability to solve difficult crimes. His novel One Shot is being adapted into a movie that may very well star the diminutive, Scientology-loving Tom Cruise, which will challenge fans used to Reacher being a hulking mass of a man. Was Hugh Jackman busy the week of the casting call?
Suzanne Collins
The Hunger Games trilogy has been read by young and old alike, and it’s no surprise that Collins has already passed the one million mark this month. What we do find surprising, considering the colossal amount of YA books on the market: That she’s the first young adult author to do so. What must JK Rowling think?
Michael Connelly
You might have heard of Hieronymus Bosch, an LAPD detective that works the homicide beat and also answers to the name “Harry,” perhaps because he shares the name of a 15th Century Dutch painter of fantastical triptychs. Bosch has been a staple of Connelly’s crime novels for decades, and there’s no sign he’ll slow down anytime soon, though he supposedly has three years left until his retirement from the force. Connelly’s latest novel featuring Bosch — The Drop — will be released in late November.