A Surprising List of Authors
Who Have Self-Published

(source: John Kremer, editor of the Book Marketing Update Newsletter)

I don’t know where people get the idea that if you’re self-published you can’t be any good. I think they believe that if "legitimate” publishers like Random House or Doubleday didn’t break down your door to have the privilege of publishing your book, you must stink as a writer. While it is true there are some writers who need to improve their talent and hire a good editor to proof their work, they are in the minority. Other writers consider self-publishing as a means of making far more money on (and have more control of) your work than you can expect from a commercial “name” publisher

In summary, self-publishing doesn’t deserve this “black eye.” Need proof? Read a partial list below of self-publishers and see if you recognize any names. I think this list will shock you. It did me.

· Margaret Atwood
· L. Frank Baum (author of Wizard of Oz)
· William Blake
· Ken Blanchard
· Robert Bly
· Elizabeth Barrett Browning
· Lord Byron
· Willa Cather
· Pat Conroy
· Stephen Crane (Red Badge of Courage)
· e.e. cummings
· W.E.B. DuBois
· Alexander Dumas
· T.S. Eliot
· Lawrence Ferlinghetti
· Benjamin Franklin
· Zane Grey
· Thomas Hardy
· E. Lynn Harris
· Nathaniel Hawthorne
· Ernest Hemingway (name sound familiar?)
· Robinson Jeffers
· Spencer Johnson
· Stephen King (name sound familiar?)
· Rudyard Kipling
· Louis L'Amour
· D.H. Lawrence
· Rod McKuen
· Marlo Morgan
· John Muir
· Anais Nin
· Thomas Paine
· Tom Peters
· Edgar Allen Poe
· Alexander Pope
· Beatrix Potter
· Ezra Pound
· Marcel Proust
· Irma Rombauer
· Carl Sandburg
· Robert Service
· George Bernard Shaw
· Percy Bysshe Shelley
· Upton Sinclair
· Gertrude Stein
· William Strunk
· Alfred Lord Tennyson
· Henry David Thoreau
· Leo Tolstoy
· Mark Twain
· Walt Whitman
· Virginia Woolf