Self publishing, by the numbers.

[Brainstormy]

15. What this leaves out

among other things, is how much it costs to promote a book. Good, and I mean GOOD, self-published books still only get read if the author is willing to spend money and work like hell to self-promote, which is much more difficult, and more humiliating, than having a publishing house push your book and use their well-established connections to get reviews, blurbs, etc. As for some of these stats. Lots of self-published authors simply lie about their sales. Sometimes they lie big. A diet book author looked me in the face a while back and claimed he'd sold fifty thousand copies. I could fairly see his nose growing.