Has anyone on here self-published successfully?

Answer 1

Define "successfully."

Many self-publishers are happy if they sell a few hundred copies. Maybe they wrote a history of their small town, or a how-to book for their favorite hobby and just wanted to share it with others. Some people are happy just to hold their book in a "book" form. Maybe they gathered all of grandma's old love letters and published them in a book to distribute to the family or something. "Success" is a variable thing.

If you are asking if any self-publishers have ever hit the bestseller list, those are few and far between. The most successful self-publishers are those with very specific niches in non-fiction. Particularly self-help books.

Fiction and poetry, on the other hand, are extremely hard sells. Unfortunately, most people who self-publish publish fiction and poetry because they think they can't get a traditional publisher. Because the market for fiction and poetry is so competitive to begin with, these authors tend to be the most dissappointed. The typical self-published book will sell less than 100 copies.

Self-publishing is a very expensive process. Even if you use a free service like Lulu.com, you still can spend hundreds or thousands of dollars in marketing and promotions...and unless you already have a firm understanding of marketing, that money is generally thrown away in all the wrong places.

Answer 2

The only people I know who have self-published successfully were writing non-fiction with a small, easily identifiable niche market which the authors were already a part of.

One was a book on model trains before WWII, the other a book connecting the Tarot with psychiatry.

For each of these, the authors counted themselves successful to sell several hundred copies, about 1/4 to 1/3 of the potential market.

Answer 3

Success in self-publishing is easy. All one really needs is money. Self-publishing enterprises will pretty much publish anything, as long as the author is willing to pay for the publisher to produce copies of the author's work.

Real publishers, and discriminant readers, typically stay clear of self-published materials because the fact it was self-published suggests the work lacks the quality and integrity (not to mention the money-making potential) of works published the "right way".