Today's Successful Authors That Self-published
Vince Flynn, Jack Canfield, and Christopher Paolini Beat the Odds
Jun 15, 2009
Today's self-published authors are different than in the past. With access to such companies as Lulu.com and iUniverse, would-be authors are finding that they can have a chance to compete in the marketplace, especially when iUniverse's debut memoir If I Knew Then, by Amy Fisher reached 14 on the New York Times Best Seller List in 2004.
For many readers, it is not surprising that Amy Fisher would produce a best seller given the fame she received in 1992 when the then seventeen-year-old attempted to murder the wife of her lover, Joey Buttafuoco.
What is surprising, though, is that there are several notable authors who have succeeded in the book business simply by writing good books that people enjoy just as Edgar Allen Poe and James Redfield did before them.
Vince Flynn and the Mitch Rapp Series
For those not familiar with the military thriller genre, Vince Flynn is the hot name today. If ever in Iraq or Afghanistan, one would be hard pressed to find a unit that didn't have at least one serviceman that was reading one of his novels.
Flynn was venturing into the world of business, according to his online biography, first at Kraft, and then in real estate as he wrote Term Limits, a story of distressed Americans striking back against a corrupt government.
Flynn used his business skills to have Term Limits carried in several bookstores, and it performed well enough that it was picked up by Pocket Books to be published in 1998, becoming a member of several best seller lists the following year in paperback.
Today, Flynn is looking forward to the October 13 release of his eleventh novel, Pursuit of Honor, the tenth of his Mitch Rapp series of stories. He has written for the hit television series, 24, and has appeared on many political shows where his skills in writing military fiction has led some to believe that he is a credible enough source on what is and isn't an appropriate classification of torture in methods of interrogation, as was shown during his December 1, 2008 interview with Bill O'Reilly on The O'Reilly Factor.
Jack Canfield – Chicken Soup for 100 Million Souls
The Chicken Soup for the Soul series has been a publishing phenomenon spawning over 200 titles with over 100 million copies in print. The idea that publishers were passing up the opportunity to set themselves up for life with such a great success is a tale too common.
As per Canfield's own admission in a 2001 speech he gave in Charlotte, NC he and his partner, Mark Victor Hansen, were told that "no one wants to read" the stories they had compiled.
And so, Canfield and his partner, published the work themselves and began promoting it. Through their attitudes toward positive action, Hansen, as told in The Secret, was discovered while participating in a book event. In 1993, 101 Chicken Soup stories were published by Health Communication, Inc. Today, there are more than enough copies in circulation to be in every house in the United States.
Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle
One of the most successful fantasy writers today is twenty-five-year-old Christopher Paolini.
Paolini, while home schooled as a child in Montana, was encouraged through much of his education to write, and write he did. He created the first draft of his best selling novel, Eragon, which later became a blockbuster movie, at the age of fifteen.
Eragon was first released in 2001, around the time of the author's eighteenth birthday. Following its release, Paolini spent the next year promoting it at schools, libraries, and bookstores where it had been discovered by Hoot author, Carl Hiaasen. Hiaasen brought the story to the attention of his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers, and a revised edition was published in 2003.
The results have been tremendous as demand for the stories known as the Inheritance Trilogy, which began with Eragon, have now become the Inheritance Cycle, of which the fourth book has yet to be given a date of release.
The world of self-publishing is generally stacked against those who attempt to seek it out, but, as seen with three solid examples of success, victory is available to those who provide for the needs of their readers. Be it by way of stories of espionage, self improvement, or fantasy, the publishing world is a wide open, free market for anyone with the guts to compete.
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