Every so often a single data point comes along that reorganizes how you think about indie publishing. This is one of those. According to the latest K-lytics Summer 2026 fantasy market report, the top-earning publisher on the June Fantasy bestseller list wasn’t Bloomsbury. It wasn’t Entangled’s Red Tower. It was Dandy House, the personal imprint of one self-published author: Matt Dinniman, creator of the LitRPG series Dungeon Crawler Carl.

The numbers, and why they matter

Dinniman has eight books on the Fantasy list moving an estimated 8,700 combined copies and borrows a day. Sarah J. Maas, by contrast, has fourteen books charting, more than any other author on the list, but her higher-priced, non-Kindle-Unlimited titles through Bloomsbury move a combined 2,688 copies a day. Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 1, published all the way back in October 2020, still sits at number 2 on the entire Fantasy list nearly six years later.

Read that again. A single self-published author with his own imprint is outselling one of the biggest names in traditional fantasy publishing, on a book that’s been out for six years.

The structure is the real story

What makes this more than a fluke is the business model underneath it. Dinniman signed with Ace Books in 2024, but he retained his ebook and audiobook rights, licensing only the print rights to Ace. That’s the hybrid model in its purest form: keep the high-margin digital formats where you make real money, and let a traditional publisher handle the part of the business, print distribution and shelf space, that they still do better than almost anyone else.

The series has reportedly sold past 6 million copies, has a Peacock TV adaptation from Seth MacFarlane in production, and its tabletop RPG raised nearly $10 million in a crowdfunding campaign this spring. This isn’t a scrappy underdog story anymore. It’s a fully realized publishing business built by one author who never gave up the parts of it that paid the most.

What this means if you’re not writing LitRPG

You don’t need to write about dungeon crawls to learn something from this. The lesson is about which rights you hold onto and why. Ebook and audiobook royalties compound over years in a way print licensing income often doesn’t, especially once a backlist title is established and still selling on its own momentum. If you’re negotiating any kind of hybrid or traditional deal, Dinniman’s structure is worth having in your back pocket as a reference point: what would it look like to keep your digital rights and license only what a traditional partner is genuinely better positioned to do?

It’s also a reminder that “self-published” and “small” aren’t the same word anymore. The ceiling on what an indie author’s own imprint can achieve, in reach, in revenue, and in cultural footprint, keeps climbing. Six years after his first launch, Dinniman is still near the top of an entire genre, built almost entirely on infrastructure he owns.

Sources:

• Author Media, “The Week That Changed Indie Publishing: KDP Royalties, Book Pirates, and AI Audio Theft”
• K-lytics, Fantasy Top 100 Market Snapshot, June 2026
• Wikipedia, “Dungeon Crawler Carl” (publishing history and rights structure)

KL Adams is a literary blogger and fiction writer specializing in dark fantasy, vampire fiction, and paranormal romance. Follow on WordPress, Inkitt (https://www.inkitt.com/KLAdams), and Wattpad (https://www.wattpad.com/KLAdams53) for reviews, reading lists, and stories that haunt you long after the last page.

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