Inspired by Tom Cordle's post.... here are some lists of self published authors .... some may surprise you... like John Grisham and Anais Nin and Richard Nixon!
I'm part of the independent publishing community here in the Bay Area... I write a column every month for the BAIPA News (posted on my other blog) so feel free to add, challenge, ask questions....
- Alexander Dumas
- Alexander Pope
- Alfred Lord Tennyson
- Anais Nin
- Beatrix Potter, creator of the Peter Rabbit Classic Series.
- Benjamin Franklin
- Bernard Shaw
- Carl Sandburg
- Christopher Paolini
- D.H. Lawrence
- Deepak Chopra
- E. Lynn Harris
- e.e. cummings
- Edgar Allen Poe
- Edgar Rice Burroughs
- Ernest Hemingway
- Ezra Pound
- George Bernard Shaw
- Gertrude Stein
- Henry David Thoreau
- Irma Rombauer: The Joy of Cooking
- Jack Canfield and Mark Hensen, Chicken Soup for the Soull
- James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy
- John Grisham: A Time to Kill
- John Muir
- Ken Blanchard
- L. Frank Baum
- L. Ron Hubbard: Dianetics
- Lawrence Ferlinghetti
- Leo Tolstoi
- Lord Byron
- Louis L'Amour
- Marcel Proust
- Margaret Atwood
- Mark Twain: Huckleberry Finn
- Marlo Morgan
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Pat Conroy
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Richard Bolles: What Color Is Your Parachute?
- Richard Nixon: Real Peace
- Richard Paul Evans, The Christmas Box
- Robert Bly
- Robert Service
- Robinson Jeffers
- Rod McKuen
- Rudyard Kipling
- Spencer Johnson
- Stephen Crane
- Stephen King
- T.S. Eliot
- Thomas Hardy
- Thomas Paine
- Tom Peters
- Upton Sinclair
- Virginia Woolf
- W.E.B. DuBois
- Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass
- Willa Cather
- William Blake
- William E.B. DuBois
- Zane Grey
by book title:
- Remembrance of things Past, by Marcel Proust
- Ulysses, by James Joyce
- The Adventures of Peter Rabbit, by Beatrix Potter
- The Wealthy Barber, by David Chilton
- The Bridges of Madison County
- What Color is Your Parachute
- In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters
- The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. (and his student E. B. White)
- When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple
- Life’s Little Instruction Book
- Robert’s Rules of Order
During his entire lifetime, Herman Melville's timeless classic, Moby Dick, sold only 3,715 copies.
Rejected by publishers
- Pearl S. Buck - The Good Earth - 14 times
- Norman Mailer - The Naked and the Dead - 12 times
- Patrick Dennis- Auntie Mame - 15 times
- George Orwell - Animal Farm
- Richard Bach - Jonathan Livingston Seagull - 20 times
- Joseph Heller - Catch-22 - 22 times (!)
- Mary Higgins Clark - first short story - 40 times
- Alex Haley - before Roots - 200 rejections
- Robert Persig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - 121 times
- John Grisham - A Time to Kill - 15 publishers and 30 agents (he ended up publishing it himself)
- Jack Canfield and Mark Hensen, Chicken Soup for the Soull - 33 times
- Dr. Seuss - 24 times
- Louis L'Amour - 200 rejections
- Jack London - 600 before his first story
- John Creasy - 774 rejections before selling his first story. He went on to write 564 books, using fourteen names.
- Jerzy Kosinski - 13 agents and 14 publishers rejected his best-selling novel when he submitted it under a different name, including Random House, which had originally published it.
- Diary of Anne Frank
Sources:
Addendum:
To build this list I used several well-known and respected web resources (I did not use Wikipedia)... such as John Kremer's sites and Dan Poynter's resources. These kinds of lists are always subject to error and I see that James Joyce is on Poynter's list (although he doesn't mention Ulysses). I have read in several places that one of Beatrix Potter's books was self published.
This list is not meant to communicate that these authors *only* self published, only that they did at one time or another.
I restructured the sources list to be clearer.
Addendum 2:
I've been asked to post some more self publishing links:
Dan Poynter's (author of the Self Publishing Manual) Para Publishing site
lulu.com (diy publishing)
blurb.com (mostly picture books)
createspace.com (owned by amazon)
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Jay Kimball
Gavin Newsom
Dean Unick
Dry Fly
Catamitebastard
o'stephanie
Salon.com
Comments
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grif... basically a self or independent publisher takes all the risks (financial and otherwise) but has all the control and reaps all the profits.... publishing is a business for most and takes resources (time, energy, money) to be successful. but....
it can be fun and for those of us who are not afraid of technology, ti can be relatively easy... check out lulu.com, createspace.com (owned by amazon), blurb.com (mostly picture books) ...
thanks biblio -- some (few) are finding that self-publishing can lead them to traditional publishing, but that world is putting more and more weight on authors to market their books.... so....
ph
mikel... will do.... how do you like lulu?
ph
thanks so much for reminding me Delia.
ph
i'm glad roger -- you never know when your information is actually going to be helpful. yay.
It is no easy task, though, and I probably will do another post to share some of the hard-won lessons I've learned. But the very first question anybody should ask themselves before considering self-publishing is this: Are you relatively competent as a public speaker or presenter? If you're the shy retiring type, not matter how good your book, you may have a difficult time marketing it yourself.
htpp://cinnabarbridge.wordpress.com/
....... how anyone could write 564 books is beyond comprehension, and rejections - I don't know if I would have the heart to keep counting!
Is it enough to cite sources without at least some research or attempts to verify their accuracy? Of the first ten authors on your Authors (by alpha) list, only one could be said to have "self-published", and that was Ben Franklin, who, of course, was a printer and publisher by profession at that time of his life.
Even a cursory browse through Wikipedia would have alerted you to the nonsensical nature of your list:
Alexandre Dumas père sold his first work Elégie sur la mort du général Foy successfully, vendu " au profit des Grecs ", in his own words. Thereafter, as a successful playwright, there was no shortage of publishers for his novels even has he moved from country to country to avoid creditors. Alexandre Dumas fils, perhaps because of his lineage, also had no problems finding a publisher. La Dame aux Camélias was published in 1848 by, I believe, Ed. Calmann-Lévy . In any case, I have a copy of their 1852 version of the dramatized play from the novel.
The others seem to be invented from whole cloth. Beatrix Potter married her publisher, but that would hardly fit your standard prescription for self-publishing. Christopher Paolini I do not know, and does not seem to belong in the same pantheon.
In the list by book title, Proust (who was quite rich and didn't bestir himself out of his rooms anyway), in fact, arranged to pay for the printing of the first run of Du côté de chez Swann for his friend, the publisher Grasset. All the subsequent (including posthumously published) volumes were gladly published by Éditions Gallimard, probably the most famous of French publishing houses and still proudly extant.
The inclusion of Joyce's Ulysses is mystifying at best. After all, he was already established as a writer by then, and Sylvia Bleach of the original Shakespeare and Co. in Paris (alas, not the current bookshop) famously published Ulysses in 1922. Despite the censorship problems etc. it was published continually since by Odyssey Press, Random House and others.
A rather lengthy critique, but my point is: if your citations do not stand, then surely your thesis fails. Perhaps a personally researched, shorter list would serve your purposes better,
I also offer a service for writers and clients whereby I will take a Word ms. through the lulu publication process, but most writers can do that without hiring me.
When I lived in Santa Barbara, I heard Dan Poynter (who lives there) speak and went to a meeting in which people who had followed his book-marketing strategies talked about their positive experiences. It sounded as if marketing your own book alone is a full-time job if it is lead to significant financial reward. I found their stories daunting.
On the other hand, my friend Wes Roberts self-published The Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun, and he and his wife stored the books in their basement and sent copies to many influential people. Eventually Ross Perot, as I recall, wanted to give the book to everyone at GM and the GM CEO said no. Time mag. picked up the story and headlined it something like, The Book GM Doesn't Want Its People to Read. That got so much publicity that a mainstream publisher bought the book, and it became a bestseller. So imagination in marketing as well in writing can pay off.
yes, it can take a lot of marketing to sell a lot of books... but as you stated there are lots of reasons to publish books. and you're right, some books can be effectively self-published and some do better with large publishers. good luck with all your books.
The point of my earlier comment was specific: did you check out any of your cites, even by just checking via Wikipidea. Do you stand behind your references?
So called authority (see Rob St. Amant's current post) is diluted even further through reflected authority second hand. People here (see Nantehay earlier) appear to be relying on and encouraged by your post. If your sources are not authentic, I believe you should issue a disclaimer in your header for the sake of professionalism.
i also believe that this list, long or short, is helpful to struggling authors to see that others have travelled a similar path and if they find encouragement here, i'm glad.
I successfully quit smoking several years ago by using a technique of my own design. I think it would work for others, so I'm considering self-publishing that book on my own. Your list has helped to encourage me to do this.
Great job!
Helen Gallagher
www.releaseyourwriting.com