This 27-year-old author has sold 1 million books, but never in stores
From 99c to a six-figure deal: How this Gen Z author made the leap Matt Rogers has sold more than a million books by self-publishing. But he’s always hankered to have his work in book stores
Matt Rogers has written 36 books and lived off his words for nine years, but never seen one of them in a bookstore.
He’s a self-published author – someone who does the work of editing, publishing and marketing books directly to readers, rather than through a publishing house, such as Hachette or Penguin Random House.
Well, until recently. As of July, Rogers, 27, will call “big five” publisher Simon & Schuster home, after signing a six-figure deal to write three books.
The first is The Forsaken, which will be published on July 2. The thriller follows a former CIA contract killer (whom Rogers modelled on the physicality of Chris Hemsworth) as he seeks answers – both philosophical and material – while exacting vengeance on those who murdered his best friend.
For many authors, acquiring a publishing deal – no less a three-book, six-figure deal – would be considered the beginning of a (hopefully) illustrious career.
But for Rogers, who has already sold more than a million copies of his thrillers, it’s about finding new readers – and hopefully meeting some of them in person at last.
“I’ve had a tonne of sales self-publishing, but nothing outside of that. No bookshop experiences, never actually interacting with readers in the flesh. That was the reason I went over to traditional publishing. I slowly realised that while you can have a lot of sales in self-publishing, at the end of the day, it can feel like numbers on screen,” he says.
“There’s a real tangible aspect to walking into a bookstore and meeting someone who’s read it.
“It’s a bit surreal, actually.”
Rogers is the latest in a string of high-profile acquisitions by Simon & Schuster publisher Anthea Bariamis.
The Millennial publisher ascended the ranks with such prescient buys as the originally self-published Hannah Grace’s hockey romance Icebreaker, and signing former NRL player and The Bachelor contestant Luke Bateman to a two-book deal.
She pays “a lot” of attention to self-published authors, and now she wants to bring Rogers to the masses.
“[When I read the book] my ‘spidey senses’ were tingling,” says Bariamis.
“I find that self-published authors are some of the smartest and hardest-working people. Number one, they’re business people. Number two, they know the realities of putting something as vulnerable as your writing out there in a personal way.
“They’re really fantastic, smart, innovative people, and on top of that, their work is clearly resonating with readers.”
Claire Parnell, a lecturer in digital publishing at the University of Melbourne, says the rise of platforms such as Kindle Unlimited and Kobo over the past 15 years has meant self-publishing has grown both as a means for writers to make money from their work, and also as an entry point to traditional publishing deals.
We’re in a content-rich environment, notes Parnell. Today, publishers have to vie for attention with the likes of Netflix and Instagram, while it’s harder to find space for book reviews in newspapers.
“Attention and discoverability is increasingly difficult as more books are published,” she says.
It means that self-published authors, who already have thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of readers (and track records of writing stories that sell), become increasingly attractive to publishers, she says.
No more law school, it’s writing for me
Rogers had been writing since he was six. Inspired by the Jack Reacher novels, at 18 he published his first book, Isolated, on Kindle for 99¢.
He was one semester into a law degree at the time, but he wasn’t sure about it. So, he decided to take a gap year and give the writing thing a go. He never finished the law degree.
“I read on these forums that authors had found success just by putting their first book out so cheaply, and seeing if anyone was interested in it. People are more willing to take a bit of a risk on an unheard-of book if it’s cheap,” he says.
From that 99¢, he earned 33¢ a copy.
He released the sequel about four months later for $3.99. He’d focused on building a mailing list tied to a short story he’d written in the Isolated world. That, coupled with the readers he’d gained publishing the first one, meant the sequel “blew up”, and soon provided a reasonable income. He now sells most of his books for $6.99.
“Looking back on it, it’s pretty crazy that I put myself out there like that,” he says.
“I think the naïveté of youth was on my side. Nothing seems like that big of a deal at that age.”
It also means that for Rogers, signing with Simon & Schuster is both a huge personal achievement, and a financial gamble. For his books priced over $0.99 on Kindle, he was getting about 70 per cent of the sale price in royalties, and 35 per cent for those $0.99 or cheaper. But the industry standard in traditional publishing is about 15 per cent.
“But it’s always been my dream to see my book in a bookstore. [I want] to see someone reading it at a train station,” he says.
He’d also observed the career trajectory of fellow Australian author Terry Hayes, who published the runaway success I Am Pilgrim in 2013. “You do need this big powerhouse behind you to create something that can resonate, and have people tell each other about it.
“And with The Forsaken, it’s the best thing I’ve written, so I saw the potential for it to be my breakout novel, hopefully.”
Now he’s counting down the days to the book launch.
“I’ll probably visit around 20 bookstores. It’ll feel like a dream at that point.”
The Forsaken by Matt Rogers is available July 2 (Simon & Schuster, $34.99).
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