Great series of articles from booksellers.com about the impact self-publishing is making on traditional publishers. Also includes some interesting approaches to self-promotion. Some Highlights

“For many authors self-publishing has become a fantastic marketing tool to garner attention from the industry’s big players. By proving that they are both ambitious and serious, and have sales figures to boot, self-publishing gives new authors even more ammunition; their work stops being just an unsolicited manuscript on a slushpile and becomes instead a ­viable product with its own CV.” [Andrew Lownie] set up Thistle Publi­cations in 1996, and produced 1,000 copies of each volume at a unit cost of £4 a book. Following adverts in the Spectator and some decent press coverage Lownie sold the complete run, making five or six pounds profit for each copy. He says: “It is even easier nowadays with the internet, you can set up a website and sell your book straight to readers…” Set up in September 2008, authonomy lets unpublished and self-published authors post their manuscripts on its site, where they are ranked by fellow users. The most highly ranked manuscripts are then considered for publication by the publishers’ editors. Interestingly, Steve Dunne, one of the authors to be signed up by HC had self-published his novel The Reaper before he put it on authonomy. Malcher explains: “I think he had sold several thousand copies, and although we wouldn’t have spotted him if he wasn’t on the site, once we found him we thought, ‘what else backs this investment up’, and his self publishing sales did.” Wannabe author Vineet Bhala has caused a stir on authonomy.com. More commonly known as the blogger Klazart on the gaming website Starcraft, Bhala has used his 8,000 loyal subscribers to push his novel Lesser Sins to the top of Authonomy’s charts. In 2006, Jill Bolte Taylor sold almost 4,000 copies of her self-published memoir My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey through Lulu.com, and the book was subsequently acquired by Viking US.

Link I welcome your feedback. Kimberly