500

Dawn of Destiny, book one in Lee Stephen's Epic series, has officially breached the 500-copies-sold mark, less than a year before its publication date.

"This is a major, major milestone," said Stephen. "For an independently-published book to sell over 500 copies in less than a year is very rare. This has been a blessed experience from day one, and it's not slowing down."

To put what Dawn of Destiny has done into perspective:

• The average "self-published" book sells less than 150 copies in its lifetime.
• Less than 3.4% ever sell more than 500.
• The average title from major publishing houses sells that same amount.

"You have to eliminate the oddities from the equation," Stephen went on. "The Harry Potters, the Stephen Kings, the Left Behinds. Those books make up less than a fraction of a fraction of the books on the market. They don't represent the reality of the publishing industry at all. We're not in competition with that."

So what is the Epic series in competition with? Epic recently became the new best-selling independent sci-fi series on Amazon--a category that includes tens of thousands of titles.

"We're making a little name for ourselves, slowly but surely. We'll go as far as God's grace will take us."