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Self-Published Zombie Titles Have Doubled Since 2012

Posted by samzenpus on from the all-we-want-to-do-is-eat-your-brains dept.

An anonymous reader writes "For the second year in a row, the number of self-published ebooks with the word zombie in their title has doubled. The annual check is performed on Halloween in Amazon's Kindle Store, and this year discovers 8,052 ebooks (with titles like 'Jesus Camp Zombie Bloodbath' and 'Never Slow Dance with a Zombie...') — more than 12 times the number that appear in the Library of Congress. 71-year-old literary author Joyce Carol Oates — twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize — also named her 2009 novel about a serial killer 'Zombie (P.S.'", but most of the titles in the Kindle Store 'aren't as ambitious,' notes this article, which still applauds the self-published authors and their 'massive outpouring of new creativity, as people all around the globe start wondering what's going to happen in their own imaginary zombie scenarios...'"

17 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. I suspect... by TheloniousToady · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...that most of them are autobiographies.

    1. Re:I suspect... by gallondr00nk · · Score: 5, Funny

      ...that most of them are autobiographies.

      Ghost written, surely? ;)

    2. Re:I suspect... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      uhm ... what was your dead giveaway.

  2. I suspect the reason they're self-published by themushroom · · Score: 3, Insightful

    is because a real publishing house with editors would reject them as poorly written tripe.
    (And that Oates went through her publisher, and was not self-published.)

    --
    Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
    1. Re:I suspect the reason they're self-published by inflex · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Oh help us, imagine if this happened in the world of software, eeeeish, they'd probably create something like Linux! *shudder*.

      Readers are the ultimate choice makers, while big publishing houses can bring some useful services to the writer they're quickly becoming less relevant as the whole industry reworks itself into more independent units for hire ( cover art, editing, proofing, marketing ).

    2. Re: I suspect the reason they're self-published by mcgrew · · Score: 2

      Actually, you'll find that a significant portion of self-published authors is very concerned with quality control... We self-published writers try very hard to escape the reputation of uploading unedited garbage.

      You could have fooled me.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
  3. and as a result by themushroom · · Score: 5, Insightful

    so is quality control.

    --
    Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
  4. beaten-to-death trend by themushroom · · Score: 3, Funny

    Zombie lit, just like real zombies, is impervious to the fact that it's dead. (Same with vampires and vampire lit.) Funny that.

    --
    Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
  5. Fashion trends by bob_super · · Score: 2

    Can someone make a graph with the yearly occurrences of wizards (early '00s), vampires, werewolves (late '00s), zombies (early '10s) ?
    Cross it with more standard fanfic (esp star wars from 99 to 05, star trek afterwards).

    Wraiths, mummies and ghouls would like to know when they'll get their turn. (and don't tell me they're harder to write for, you can pull a Twilight and reinvent them completely, just keeping the name)

    1. Re:Fashion trends by wvmarle · · Score: 4, Insightful

      More interesting: how does this compare to the overall number of self-published e-books? Afaik self-publishing as a whole is growing fast, too. If the number of self-published titles has doubled, it's no wonder zombie-titles doubled too.

  6. Oh Noes! by hguorbray · · Score: 2

    I thought one of our main defences against zombies was that they couldn't reproduce..

    -I'm just sayin'

    1. Re:Oh Noes! by Hentes · · Score: 2

      They reproduce by eating the brains of their readers.

  7. Rather popular by Rolpa · · Score: 2

    Replace the word 'ebooks' with 'video games', and I would bet the resulting statement would still be pretty accurate.

  8. I misread the headline by flargleblarg · · Score: 3, Funny

    At first I thought it said:
    Self-Published Zombie Titties Have Doubled Since 2012

  9. Moore's Law by jblues · · Score: 2

    Will there be a kind of Moore's Law of Zombie books that comes in to play?

    --
    If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
  10. I published The Bolachek Journals just recently by Izaak · · Score: 2

    I've been getting great feedback. Rather than the usual shotgun toting road warrior style hero, I decided to explore how a tech geek might approach the zombie apocalypse. Its been described as McGuyver meets the Walking Dead. Part 1 is available on Nook, Kindle, Smashwords, or download it for free directly from my blog. So far I've been getting 5 star reviews and very positive comments, but I would love to hear some feedback from the more technology savvy Slashdot demographic.

    --

    The Bolachek Journals

  11. Zombie rant by korbulon · · Score: 2

    What the fuck is the deal with this fascination with zombies? Especially among relatively intelligent people (i.e. nerds). I don't get it. Fundamentally it's a dumb idea, at least how it's presented 95% of the time. The only time for me that it works is as parody or as allegory, but taken as a natural phenomenon it doesn't have legs, feet, torso, etc. to stand on. A few exceptions where the genre works, it is attributable to external agency (e.g,. supernatural, alien). Very little of zombie lore withstands even superficial scrutiny. Why always so hungry when lacking a functioning digestive system? How are limbs able to hunt without sensory organs? Or move without a circulatory system? Why be only an asshole to the living and not to your fellow zombies? Also, how do they decide who to eat and who to indoctrinate into the zombie horde? No, no. It's just plain stupid.