: Re: Are the most successful authors like Stephen King and Jk Rowling all trade-published? I mean are the most famous authors usually trade-published or are there some self-published others that are

@Goswami879

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Authors have become famous while self-publishing, but famous authors rarely stay self-published for long

Two examples in the recent past:

Andy Weir self-published The Martian in 2011. He posted it in serial format on his website, and later published it as a 99 cent Kindle book. It rose to the top of the Kindle's best sellers list, and in 2013 he sold the rights to Crown Publishing, a subsidiary of Random House, who released it in hardcover and paperback, where it once again skyrocketed to the top of the charts. In 2015, the movie was released and succeeded critically and financially.

50 Shades of Gray began life as a Twilight fanfiction. The author, E.L. James, subsequently removed it from the fanfiction sites and posted it on her own website. It was published by a small Australian web-publisher, The Writer's Coffee Shop, in 2011. In 2012 the series was picked up by Vintage Books, a subdivision of (once again) Random House. It too is now a movie (series).

Publishing a book is hard

The barriers today are a lot lower than they used to be, since a single uploaded file can be downloaded billions of times. But if you want to enter the realm of physical books, things are a lot harder.

You have to find a printer who will print you thousands of books. And you have to find the money to pay the printer, because they're going to want payment upfront, even though you're nearly broke because you're an author who is living off of ebook sales. Then you need a place to store these books, because they aren't going to all be bought immediately. Then you have to contact bookstores so that you can sell your books to them. Then you have to ship the books to the bookstores. And each one of those steps have innumerable details and complications and things you aren't prepared for.

Successful authors tend to be successful for one major reason - they are good at writing books that people want to read. Also, they tend to like writing books. This other stuff? The desire and the ability to handle these things are much scarcer. Even if it wasn't, the competence of one brilliant author is far outshone by the experience and resources a major publisher can bring to the table.

Publishers love books that have already been proven successful. Authors love publishers that can take the heavy lifting off their hands so that they can go back to doing what they love. So best-selling books rarely stay self-published for long

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