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Self-Publishing Hall of Fame
Featuring Famous Self-Publishers

John Kremer's Self-Publishing Hall of Fame — This book features the stories of hundreds of famous self-publishers who have gone on to great success. It also features tips from many of the hall of famers on how to do what they did. I publish this book as an ebook because I’m continually adding new heroes to it. June, 2011. 297-page ebook download. $20.00.

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Self-Publishing Hall of Fame Listings

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Self-publishing was once considered as bad as vanity publishing, but with so many self-published successes in the past few years, it is now possible to self-publish with respect. Publishers Weekly will now look at self-published books, something they would never have done five or ten years ago. “Gone are the days,” wrote Publishers Weekly rights columnist Paul Nathan, “when self-publishing was virtually synonymous with self-defeating.”

And now with the advent of print-on-demand publishing, it's possible to self-publish books at little cost. POD publishing or self-publishing (Please Note: they are not the same thing) are excellent ways to test the market for a book, establish that market, and even build the market to such an extent that an author can sell the reprint rights to a much larger book publisher for a very good advance. Indeed, many larger book publishers now scour the shelves and the Internet for self-published and POD books that could fit their publishing program. Self publishing has become respectable again.

Publishing your own book can be a great solution to producing your own book.

You could stock a superb college library or an incredible bookstore just from the books written by the some of the authors who have chosen to self-publish their books at some point in their lives. Here are some of our most famous self-publishers: Margaret Atwood, William Blake, Ken Blanchard, Robert Bly, Lord Byron, Willa Cather, Pat Conroy, Stephen Crane, e.e. cummings, W.E.B. DuBois, Alexander Dumas, T.S. Eliot, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Benjamin Franklin, Zane Grey, Thomas Hardy, E. Lynn Harris, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway, Robinson Jeffers, Spencer Johnson, Stephen King, Rudyard Kipling, Louis L'Amour, D.H. Lawrence, Rod McKuen, Marlo Morgan, John Muir, Anais Nin, Thomas Paine, Tom Peters, Edgar Allen Poe, Alexander Pope, Beatrix Potter, Ezra Pound, Marcel Proust, Irma Rombauer, Carl Sandburg, Robert Service, George Bernard Shaw, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Upton Sinclair, Gertrude Stein, William Strunk, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoi, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and Virginia Woolf.

On the following pages is a list of many other amazing authors who have chosen to self-publish at some time in their careers. You would do well to be among this honored group.

One romance author's critique of the following list: “When these example names get brought up over and over, it gives the impression that it happens all the time. But when you have to dredge through the millions of authors who have produced work over the past TWO HUNDRED years, just to make up a list that contains fifty or sixty, then it's the equivalent of saying that a person can strike oil in their back yard while digging a swimming pool. It's probably happened. But it doesn't happen often, and it's unfair to lead people to believe that they're the NEXT SURE-FIRE MULTI-MILLIONAIRE AUTHOR of the publishing game because a few people over a few centuries have accomplished it.”

I didn't dredge this list up. It is a list of almost 400 creative and noble people who at some point in their careers chose self-publishing as a legitimate option. I don't recommend self-publishing to most authors, but for some it is and has been a viable and productive option. This list tells the stories of these people. I will continue to honor them.

Please note that the full story for many of the contemporary self-publishers are included in the book version of this hall of fame.

If you would like to nominate a successful self-publisher to this Self-Publishing Hall of Fame, please send an email message to John Kremer. I know that I have missed some self-publishers I truly would like to add to this list. Your name might be one of those. Here are a few of the things that can qualify someone for inclusion in this Self-Publishers Hall of Fame: big sales, significant rights sales, impact on society, growth as a publisher, an innovative marketing strategy, or a very good book marketing story.

Self-Publishing Hall of Fame Listings

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M -- NO -- P -- QR -- S -- T -- UVW -- XYZ

Click here for the Independent Publisher Bestsellers List.

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John Kremer's Self-Publishing Hall of Fame — This book features the stories of hundreds of self-publishers who have gone on to great success. It also features tips from many of the hall of famers on how to do what they did. I publish this book as an ebook because I’m continually adding new heroes to it. A great motivational and educational tool! June 2011. 297-page ebook download. $20.00.

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