Every now and then someone makes a success of self-publishing their own book. Such a story is told in today's "Age" about the Melbourne writer Euan Mitchell who thinks of himself as a "punk publisher". Mitchell published 7,000 copies of his first book Feral Tracks for a cost of $20,000. It made $4,000 profit, but he had to handle everything himself, and he had to quit his day job. Added to that commitment he had industry experience behind him as he had worked as a senior editor at a large Melbourne publishing house. So he knew the business, he knew what sold, and he knew how to sell it.
The poster boy for self-publishing in Australia is Matthew Reilly who produced his first novel Ice Station in this way and used some well-thought out marketing techniques to get his book in the right places. Self-publishing is not for everyone but there are some successes. I was pleased to see that "The Age" article does give some figures on the numbers of people attempting this method, and the number of failures. It makes for depressing reading.
