Are there ANY suscessful SELF-PUBLISHED authors in the world?

Question

If so, what are their names and what have they written....

Quite curious thanks!

Answer 1

Christopher Paolini, the young author of the Inheritance series ("Eragon", "Eldest" & the third book is yet to be published) had started out with his first book as a "print-on-demand" title. If you are unfamiliar with this term, refer to the link below. It is not exactly self-publishing, but rather close to it.
The book was poicked up by a major publisher & went on to sell millions as well as win several awards.

Answer 2

Many successful independent presses began with one book, self-published by the author/owner. For example, Elizabeth and Alex Luch of Wedding Solutions Press have sold hundreds of thousands of copies of their wedding-related books. The owner of Adventure Publications has sold more than 1 million copies of his state birdwatching and outdoor guides.

But you will likely have to rely in part, if not entirely, on sales to nontraditional channels (i.e. channels other than bookstores and libraries) until your self-publishing venture becomes big enough for you to attract the attention of a distributor. Without a distributor, you'll never get into the bookstore chains like B&N and Borders.

Answer 3

Matthew Reilly published and printed 7,000 books of his first novel 'Contest' and walked them around to all the bookstores in his area in Australia. He now has several books, short stories, and movie and television scripts to his credit and he is still a young man. Check out his website at matthewreilly.com

Answer 4

Well, he wasn't considered a success in his own lifetime, but he's now one of the most world-famous of all authors.

William Blake published all of his own books except one. He would NOT conform to what book publishers, booksellers, and critics in his day demanded.

Not only did he publish his own poems, but he invented a format which balanced text and design, poetry and art. He created his own worlds. He didn't have the kind of inks the would have liked, so that some of his original books have faded a bit with age. His wife Catherine, who had been illiterate when they married, hand colored many of his designs. They had an ideal marriage--were once caught by a visitor nude in the garden, making love.

Toward the end of his life Blake had developed a close-knit group of faithful adherents, who called themselves the Apostles. But it wasn't until the 20th century that he was discovered as one of the major British poets. In the 1940s an art critic named Sheldon Cheney (not that other Cheney!!) wrote a book called Men Who Walked with God. He began describing the work of Lao Tzu in China and Gautama Buddha in India and concluded centuries later with his longest and perhaps most moving essay, the one on William Blake.

He classifies Blake as a mystic. Blake himself would probably have preferred the term visionary.

His most famous works are Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, America, and some "prophecies" on his visionary characters Los (or the imagination), Urizen (Reason), Ahania and Enitharmon. But the major works of his maturity are his two "epics," Milton and Jerusalem. Among his works, one of my favorites is a book of designs for the Book of Job.

I suppose his most famous lines are something like this:

To see the world in a grain of sand
and a heaven in a wild flower,
hold infinity in the palm of your hand
and eternity in an hour.

His most famous poem of probably "Tyger":

Tyger, tyger burning bright
in the forests of the night
what immortal hand or eye
could frame thy fearful symmetry.

The most famous book about his work is probably still Northrup Frye's Fearful Symmetry.

Self published? Yes. Successful in his lifetime? Not really?

Successful? Oh, yes. For all time.

And those self-made books--nowadays even good facsimiles of them, like those from the Trianon Press, cost thousands of dollars.

Check him out. Be sure you see his poems and his designs -- in color. Even if you can't find, or afford, the originals or the Trianon facsimiles.

Answer 5

Some started as self published and then latter became successful.

I think Matt Reilly

is one