Famous Self-Published Authors
Are you a self-published author or thinking of becoming one? Well, you are in good company.
Here is a list of authors and the books they self-published:
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 by Robert J. Waller; In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters; The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield; The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. (and his student E. B. White); The Joy of Cooking.
Has one of your books ever been rejected by a publisher? Again, you are in good company. Here is a list of books that were rejected by one or more 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; John Grisham , A Time to Kill – 15 publishers and 30 agents; Chicken Soup for the Soul – 33 times; Dr. Seuss – 24 times; Louis L’Amour – 200 rejections; Jack London – 600 before his first story; Diary of Anne Frank.
(Thanks to Dan Poynter www.parapublishing.com)
Other famous self-published authors include:
Deepak Chopra, Gertrude Stein, Zane Grey, Upton Sinclair, Carl Sandburg, Ezra Pound, Mark Twain, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Stephen Crane, Bernard Shaw, Anais Nin, Thomas Paine, Virginia Wolff, e.e. Cummings, Edgar Allen Poe, Rudyard Kipling, Henry David Thoreau, Benjamin Franklin, Walt Whitman, Alexandre Dumas., William E.B. DuBois, Beatrix Potter.
Do you know of any other famous self-published authors? Feel free to leave a comment below…
Ellen Gable Hrkach is the vice president of the Catholic Writers Guild. She is the award-winning author of In Name Only, a Catholic romance and now an Amazon Kindle bestseller (top 100 Religious Fiction). Her new book is Stealing Jenny which is a contemporary pro-life suspense novel. Her website is www.ellengable.com. She and her husband and five sons live in Pakenham, ON Canada.
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I self published my first two books. The first one, Mentoring Heroes, sells mostly to mentoring groups and university women studies. It was published in 2000 and continues to sell. I was recently interviewed about it on Executive Girlfriends Group.
My second book was The Rosary Prayer by Prayer. Shortly after publishing I was approached by ACTA Publications and signed over my publishing rights to them. ACTA published two more of my books after that.
There are pros and cons to both self publishing and publishing with a traditional publishing house.
As far as rejections, I've had more than I can count. My theory is you only need one publisher, so if you believe in your work and want a traditional publisher, be persistent in approaching one after the other.
Thanks for your comment, sainttheodora. You're absolutely right that there are pros and cons to both self-publishing and traditional publishing. However, I am extremely happy with self- publishing. And I'm now making a very nice supplemental income from Kindle sales (which I never expected!) God bless…