A success story from the Guardian, which shows that it is possible to make money from self-publishing.
From paying the bills, to £2,000 a day: making a killing from self-publishing
The article doesn’t say how author Adam Croft went about publicising his books and himself, which is the biggest hurdle to gaining readers, though he was running an internet marketing company at the time so perhaps he used his expertise.
The issues he raises about how self-publishing is gaining ground in the best-selling ebook chart, with 40% being uploaded by the writers themselves is proof of the groundswell of dissatisfaction with traditional publishers.
I’m glad that the Guardian, and other papers with book pages, print such articles about self-publishing, but they’re also hypocrites for they never review self-published books themselves. The only time that they pay attention to them is when a writer who’s gone it alone makes huge sales and is then offered a publishing deal with a long-established book company.
Also, ebooks are never considered as contenders for literary awards. This leads to the bizarre situation where an excluded ebook may have sold 100,000 copies, but a highly-praised literary novel with paltry sales of 4,000 is shortlisted for the Booker and gets all the attention.