Dean Wesley Smith: Why I Self Publish

Dean Wesley Smith, in an article written for Kirkus reviews, talks about how he became an indie author:

After 100-plus novels through the system, I had decided to pretty much move on. I would finish the last few contracts I had and just fade away, write some short fiction, go play some poker.

Then my wife Kristine walked into my writing office on a fine day in May 2010, laughing. She told me about a $12 payment she had just received from Amazon for two short stories.

The previous fall I had tested the new electronic book world of Amazon with a couple of her short stories and a couple of mine. And then promptly forgot about them.

As Kris stood in my office door laughing about the $12, not in a bad way, but in an astounded way that those two stories had made 12 bucks in one month, I understood finally the new world we had just entered for writers.

For the first time, writers had an option other than traditional publishers, a viable option to reach readers directly, a viable option to make a living with their fiction.

Read the rest of Dean's article here: Dean Wesley Smith: The Self-Publishing Bestseller on ‘How I Did It’

I'm fascinated by tales of why authors start to self publish. Although each person's circumstances are unique each story has the same refrain: a writer wanted an alternative to traditional publishing and they liked having more control over their work.

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