Successful Self-Publishing
The author of this story needed to interview a few more people--including the people who successfully write the "rubbish."
I will wave my hand as being a "rubbish" author. For ten years, I had two agents try to sell my sweet (meaning not sexy) historical Western romance to traditional publishers. I have a stack of rejections, not because of the writing, but because the story didn't fit the market.
I self-published the first two books in the series in April 2011, and they took off. I added a third one seven months later. Eleven months and two weeks after publication, I hit the USA Today bestseller list, and it had nothing to do with Twitter or Facebook, which I barely used at the time. I did no promotion of the books except for posting a blog from time to time. I sold almost 100,000 of my self-published books in the first year. In 2012, I had a six figure income from my books, and I have author friends whose "rubbish" makes them seven figures a year.
But successful self-published authors use EDITORS! I have a developmental editor and two copy editors.
Amazon allows readers to look inside the book and read the first chapter or so. That can help weed out any badly written books or stories that aren't to your taste.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
