Emerging Predecessors

I recently encountered a surprise on Twitter. Someone who followed my model of online success. I noticed a young girl, say around 19 years old and British, of some minority, perhaps multiracial, who had made it to as high as No. 4 on the Amazon Crime Bestseller list. I'm guessing she used Amazon Marketing Services like I did. You'd have to, wouldn't you? Either way, she was around 12 years younger than me and achieved a similar position of Bestselling Author on Amazon. So young! Not even old enough to drink, and she's writing bestselling novels. I guess I kind of forgot how important of an accomplishment writing an Amazon bestseller is. She even posted a screenshot of her sales rank on her Twitter profile. Smart. I'm surprised to find anyone is following my example. But is 19 too young to be of such a high status. I wasn't 19 when I achieved an Amazon Bestseller. I had to be 28 or 29. I had an additional 10 years of experience beyond that. I just hope she doesn't make the same mistakes I made rising up through those ranks. What a rush that must be for a young author. I wish I could still market my books and achieve that. But alas, I've been banned from AMS, it was quite debilitating. It's ironic how I can watch other authors use my method of writing bestsellers, but I can't do it myself anymore. All because of some financial technicality. I might be forced to retire from Kindle self-publishing and ebooks prematurely and just do my best at acclimating toward traditional publishing.

I guess I'm just happy I'm not the only person to have achieved this level of accomplishment. It's a relief to see other writers going the route I initially took. I predict there will be more writers and authors of this variety too. If there aren't more than that one already

-J.M.