Some have called it the greatest innovation for writers since the invention of the printing press. Others have called it the end of an era for publishers and book sellers. No matter how you look at it, the advent of ebooks has forever changed the way books are created and distributed.

Since ebook readers started appearing on the market, a plethora of them have now sprung up - the Nook from Barnes & Noble, the Ipad from Apple and the Kindle from Amazon, plus a host of others. Even mobile phones are doubling as ebook readers for those you are satisfied to navigate the three inch screens.

In July of this year, Amazon announced that it has sold 143 digital ebooks for every 100 hardback books . A few short years ago this would have been considered unthinkable. Now it reflects a groundbreaking shift in the industry.

A number of writers have come to represent the face of this shift in paradigm. One of those writers is Amanda Hocking.

The twenty-six year old recently signed a four book deal with St Martin’s Press reportedly worth more than $2 million dollars. However, it was the events leading up to the signing that made even the sternest critics sit up and take notice.

Up until recently Amanda Hocking had worked as a care worker for disabled adults. She wrote in her spare time, sending her work to publishers, but was repeatedly rejected by all the mainstream publishing houses. Then she turned to self publishing through the Amazon Kindle platform. At first her sales were slow, but they quickly accelerated.

Now she has nine ebooks for sale online and sells more than 100,000 copies every month. Her novels have sat on a number of bestseller lists. Her book “Switched” was recently sitting at number 41 on the USA Today's list of top 150 bestselling books.

Miss Hocking’s books sell for anything from 99 cents to $2.99, which may not sound like a lot, but when you do the sums it works out to around two million per year.

Now she has taken the leap (or probably a small step when you consider her success) from ebook writer to paperback writer. Apparently publishers such as Random House, HarperCollins and others got into a bidding war for her new series of books, but it was eventually the Macmillan imprint that won out in the end.

Hocking represents just one of a growing number of authors who have built their writing career on the ebook platform. Another success story is author John Locke who was recently recognised as the first self published ebook author to sell one million ebooks. In fact he achieved this in only five months. His home page goes even further, claiming, “Every 7 seconds, 24 hours a day, a John Locke novel is downloaded somewhere in the world."

John Locke’s main protagonist is a detective by the name of Donovan Creed. In addition to his bestselling detective series, Locke recently published a western (also a bestseller) and is currently working on the second book in his western series,

Don’t Poke the Bear.

John Locke seems as bemused as others by his sudden rise to fame.

“I always thought it would be a great achievement to write a complete novel. Whether it made money or not. I never acted on that idea because I was too busy with my work,” he says. “But a few years ago I found myself with some free time and some stories to tell, and thought it would be fun to give it a shot. Just write, all the way to the end, without quitting. My first manuscript was titled, ‘Killing Hailey’.”

So was this the book that led to his incredible success? Unfortunately not.

“It was absolutely dreadful. Seriously bad,” he reports. “No one needed to tell me that. When it’s bad, it’s bad. So I set it aside and thought about it a few weeks, and came to the conclusion there were some great characters in that book. All they needed was a better author. So I started over, with the characters, and let them tell the story.”

John Locke credits his success to a number of factors. One of them is his distinctive covers.

“I think if your covers are unique, they become a symbol for your work,” he said. “Last year my publisher, Claudia Jackson, of Telemachus Press, came up with the idea of using women’s legs for my covers. I loved it. It was a great branding idea.”

A key factor of John Locke’s success has also been his pricing. His books retail for only ninety-nine cents, although he has had some misgivings about the low price tag.

“Yes, it was a great way to draw attention to my books. No, because if I had started at $2.99 and lowered my prices I’d be a hero, while now, if I raise my price from 99 cents to $2.99, I’m a goat.”

Despite his incredible success with ebook publishing, he doesn’t see hard copy books disappearing completely. Not yet, at least.

“I think print books will become an experience, and ebooks a staple,” he says. “Going to a bookstore, browsing the books, is an experience. There’s something special about it. You don’t have to buy your books that way anymore, but it’s fun. The movie business is similar. You can rent or buy the movies you want to see, but the actual movie experience is different. It’s more expensive, but there’s something special about seeing a movie when it first comes out, in the format it was intended to be presented.”

John Locke recently broke away from his successful Donovan Creed series by writing a western entitled Follow the Stone, which shows he is not completely adverse to changing the cookie cutter when appropriate.

“I love the idea of westerns,” he effuses. “It’s a simple dynamic: a man or woman overcoming hardship to carve out a meaningful life in a savage land, while maintaining their integrity.”

He has also recently released a book about ebook self publishing, entitled, appropriately enough, “How I Sold One Million Ebooks in Five Months”. The book retails for $4.99, breaking away from the ninety-nine cent model. As he points out, however, the book is targeted at a smaller demographic. It is written for writers who want to make the break into successful ebook self publishing.

The book essentially has a step by step plan for authors to follow. It all begins with determining the target audience for the book. This might surprise most writers who think in terms of writing a novel and then trying to market it, but Locke urges writers to think in terms of target audiences to help focus their writing efforts.

The next step is to complete some novels. The emphasis here is on the word novels – as in plural – as a writer with one book in the market will find it one tenth as difficult to sell as a writer with ten books. Writers need more than one book available for readers, Locke believes, so they can immediately move onto more of the writer’s work.

It’s a bit like wanting seconds after a great meal and finding there’s nothing in the pot.

The writer then needs to insert the ingredients that will attract their target audience. His Donovan Creed books are lightweight crime novels with a sassy humour running through them.

The next steps connect together as smoothly as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The writer self publishes through the online sites such as Smashwords and Amazon (he recommends going with them all). Then a website needs to be created for the novel, a blog site and interview posted on someone else’s blog.

He tries to get five great reviews of his book. As he points out in “Five Months”, modern day consumers refer to the internet first before making purchases and people are far more likely to trust a personal recommendation than any form of advertising.

His next steps are to build a mailing list of 25 people who will buy his next book (this is done through collecting email address at his website) and then fishing for Twitter followers.

Locke says this last step is last step is crucial to publishing success. He believes most people do not know the power of Twitter. The little 140 character social media site can be used to target followers of particular interests through the use of hash tags. This is where an understanding of a target audience is vital to the writer.

Each time Locke writes a book, he follows the same process. Not many writers would operate this way, but maybe that’s why many writers are not all that successful.

In this brave new world of self publishing, it would seem that writers need to be in charge of editing, hiring of artists for covers and handling all their own marketing. All of this takes time and Locke himself points out the importance of continuing to write while juggling the myriad of duties.

“The minute you send your book out into the world, start writing the next one,” he says. “Don’t worry if your first one is going to sell, because it probably won’t. And if it does, your public is going to want the next book anyway, and you’ll have nothing in the tank to give them. Your readers want to know you’re committed to providing them with content. In this regard, writing is like a friendship. Do you want to be my friend? Then be there for me!”