Self publishing isn’t a new phenomenon and the dreaded cold-shoulder from publishers shouldn’t put off those thinking they have a bestseller on their hands
Big-name publishers no longer have it their own way when it comes to the potential of creating blockbuster novels that dominate the bestsellers lists.
With the likes of Amazon, Smashwords and Lulu among a vast range of platforms that allow the option to self-publish, it has become an increasingly common method to getting your masterpiece published.
Louise Stephenson is managing director at WTTB, an online B2B and D2C printing platform that has printed more than 4.5m books, booklets, reports and pieces of literature for businesses in the last 12 months alone. She’s delved into the world of self-publishing to see who has tasted literary success by doing it their own way.
Beatrix Potter
While the technology at our fingertips now makes the process much more straightforward, self publishing isn’t a new thing, and one of the biggest successes can be traced back more than 100 years to Beatrix Potter and the original The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
Having initially written and illustrated a short story across a few pages for a sick child, Potter was encouraged to try to involve a publisher to take the story to a wider audience. She was turned down by a host of uninterested publishers back in the day, so took matters into her own hands and produced 250 copies of the illustrated story under her own steam. When those 250 copies quickly sold out, Frederick Warne & Co, one of those who’d originally rejected her, did an about-turn and took on the publishing of the story. The rest is history. In all, Potter completed 23 ‘The Tale of’ stories, and sales worldwide have exceeded 250 million copies.
Many in the book world will rightly hold Beatrix Potter up as the original and one of the best when it comes to getting round the frustrating and soul destroying slog of trying to get your written work on the shelves of book stalls around the world.
Andy Weir
One of the more recent stars of the self-publishing world is The Martian, by Andy Weir, who originally posted his science fiction hit on his own website in 2011, having been rebuffed in his fruitless approaches to literary agents and publishers.
He was only encouraged to go one step further when he started getting requests for a Kindle version from eager sci-fi fans after they’d spotted he was releasing more and more chapters. Initially, he sold 35,000 copies on the Kindle platform and that’s when things really took off. It’s popularity piqued the interest of Crown Publishing Group and, having bought the rights, released the book which ultimately spent an incredible 76 weeks, 19 of them at number one, in the New York Times Bestsellers list. Estimates are that Weir has sold more than three million copies of the book.
In 2015, The Martian, with Matt Damon in the starring role as an astronaut stuck on Mars, was released in cinemas and went on to gain nine Oscar nominations.
Christopher Paolini
Christopher Paolini, another whose story ends with a cinematic blockbuster, was just 15 when he started writing Eragon, which was first printed by his own family’s tiny publishing business in 2002. Popularity rocketed and, just a year later, its traction caught the attention of a division of Random House, who bought the rights and republished it. That’s when things got big for him. Over the next nine years Paolini penned three more books in the series as a follow-up to Eragon, making it one of the most popular series of books ever. It is estimated that Paoilini’s sales now exceed 40m of all four books.
Despite grossing hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office, the 2006 film adaptation wasn’t warmly received by fans of the original dragon fantasy. Rumours suggest Disney will soon be announcing a big budget series to be screened on its Disney+ streaming platform.
EL James
Critical acclaim can often make or break the success of a novel, but EL James, the author of the Fifty Shades trilogy of books, is most definitely laughing hardest and longest having seen her books scoffed at by the literati. She struggled to even get approval to publish on niche and independent self-publishing sites because of the adult themes tackled with her two main characters, young Ana Steele and her billionaire businessman love interest, Christian Grey.
The raunchy content meant the best James could do initially was a ‘print on demand’ option on self-publish site, The Writers’ Coffee Shop, in the summer of 2011.
But the nature of the books touched a demand (and maybe more!) with fans who dismissed the critics’ snobby take on the quality of the writing and snapped up copies of the original Fifty Shades of Grey in their droves. By March 2012, the novel’s rights had been secured by Vintage Books and it quickly became a best-seller around the world. It remains the UK’s most popular paperback ever published. Follow-ups were drafted and were met with equally massive demand, with the trilogy selling more than 150 million copies worldwide.
Ironically, the film adaptations were also panned by the critics, but the paying public couldn’t get enough. The trilogy grossed $1.3bn at the box office, safely securing its spot as one of the top ten grossing adult-rated movie franchises of all time.
Kerry Wilkinson
Kerry Wilkinson has now become one of the most prolific writers of his generation, having penned more than 50 books in the last 15 years. But his route to success, and sales in excess of two million books in that time, is a story of hope for all self-publishers.
Like many keen to get a foothold, Wilkinson started by selling his novels for less than £1 on self-publish platforms. Locked In was his first book, and also the first in his detective Jessica Daniel series of crime thrillers. Just three months after releasing that, however, Wilkinson was picked up by Pan Macmillan and he has now produced more than 16 novels in that series alone.
Amanda Hocking
Amanda Hocking faced rejection after rejection and was only inspired to self publish one of her novels as a means to get enough money together to visit a Jim Henson Muppets exhibition eight hours from her Minnesota home. Hoping she might raise $300 to cover the fuel and accommodation costs, she was stunned to see sales of her paranormal romance rise sharply.
Classing herself as a writer from the tender age of 12, Hocking was still only 27 when she posted her first novel on Amazon’s self-publish platform. By then, she’d already written, and had rejected, 17 novels. Barely 18 months after first putting her novel up for sale on the self-publish platform, she’d totalled more than 1.5m book sales.
Hocking went on record to admit that she kept those rejection letters as inspiration, and had refused to cash her first Amazon Kindle check – for the princely sum of just $15 – to remind her of the struggles she first had as a budding author. She became one of the first to make it to the ‘Kindle Million Club’ of self-published authors who registered seven figure book sales.