Ed Williams said:
...Land of Poz are discussing a self published book that hit it big...
After many rejections, he & his wife took their savings & "self-published" it on their own. The book went on to sell 8 MILLION COPIES.
But gosh, you're not self-published, you're published by a known traditional publisher who's growing in both numbers and stature every day!
From the
same post :
I'm sure that he had no idea that a story of only 87 pages, meant for his family, would become a blockbuster....especially since it was not signed with a mainstream publisher!
Simon & Schuster isn't mainstream? That's where the 8 million came from.
Here's the publishing history of The Christmas Box:
Evans writes a Christmas story. Runs off 20 copies at Kinkos. Gives it to family and friends as a Christmas present.
After those 20 copies are passed from hand to hand to about 160 people, and 10 orders come in from a local bookstore, Evans wonders if perhaps he could sell this thing. Tries several local/regional presses. Not too much interest in a Christmas story when it isn't Christmas, and the book is alread self-published. Evans takes $5,000 and prints 8,000 copies (N.B. A PA author with the same $5,000 would get fewer than 500 copies). He sells these through local bookstores (and bet he offered a standard discount, took returns, and had 'em reasonably priced for an 87 page book, too).
The 8,000 copies sell out; he goes back to press. Eventually sells 20,000 by the end of the next Christmas season. S&S buys hardcover, translation, audio, and other rights. Evans keeps paperback rights.
In the subsequent years, Evans prints and sells around 400,000 copies in paperback. The rest of the 8 million in print worldwide are printed and distributed by S&S.
Evans goes on to write seven more adult novels and four kids' books. All of them are traditionally published (IOW, he didn't love self-publishing so much that he wanted to do it again).
He seems to be a good guy, donated a lot of money to charity, and I'm very happy for his success.
His success is very rare among all authors. It's even rarer among self-published authors. It's unheard-of among vanity-published authors.