I’ve always welcomed self-published books. I’m always looking for the next big thing, a new writer who no one else has discovered yet. These days, that often means a self-published author. The community of self-published authors is a treasure trove of people who are committed enough to publish their own books. They’re not going to wait around for that agent to answer their phone calls or that publisher to send them a rejection or ignore them completely (which happens to everyone at first, even great authors).
Recently, I published a book by a couple who had a business doing marriage counseling. They had published their own book and were selling it themselves. During a workshop or training session for couples, they would sell the book at the back of the room or give it out to everyone attending as part of the cost of registration. They had managed to sell tens of thousands of copies like this every year for the past eight years. That’s phenomenal. So I immediately published that book, and it has continued to do extremely well for Wiley. Another book I recently published came to me from an agent. It was a very interesting book on the psychological benefits of writing a memoir. The author had published it herself and then had gotten an agent. She had sold maybe ten thousand copies. It had only been out for about six months, but I snatched it up, and it too has done well. I should also mention that I did a lot of work on both of these books as an editor. They both needed more polish and a few structural changes in order to reach a wider market. But they were both self-published books that have gone on to do well through a traditional publisher.
I have also lost auctions for self-published books. About four or five years ago, I met an author at the Berkeley Y, and we struck up a conversation. He said, “I just published my book.” I said, “Give me a copy.” It was a Vietnam memoir, and I thought it was pretty well written and had some great information about post-traumatic stress, so I wanted to publish it. He got an agent, and unfortunately for me, the agent sent it out to a lot of publishers. We bid $25,000, McGraw-Hill bid $50,000, and I didn’t get to publish that book. That just shows you that there is a market for good self-published books among traditional publishers.