Famous Self-Published Authors

I'm over at the Catholic Writers Guild Blog today with a post about famous self-published authors.

Are you a self-published author or thinking of becoming one? Well, you are in good company.

Here is a list of authors and the books they self-published:

Remembrance of Things Past, by Marcel Proust; Ulysses, by James Joyce; The Adventures of Peter Rabbit, by Beatrix Potter; The Wealthy Barber, by David Chilton; The Bridges of Madison County by Robert J. Waller; In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters; The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield; The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. (and his student E. B. White); The Joy of Cooking.

Has one of your books ever been rejected by a publisher? Again, you are in good company. Here is a list of books that were rejected by one or more publishers:

Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth – 14 times; Norman Mailer. The Naked and the Dead – 12 times; Patrick Dennis, Auntie Mame – 15 times; George Orwell – Animal Farm; Richard Bach – Jonathan Livingston Seagull – 20 times; Joseph Heller, Catch-22 – 22 times; Mary Higgins Clark, first short story – 40 times; Alex Haley (before Roots) – 200 rejections; John Grisham , A Time to Kill – 15 publishers and 30 agents; Chicken Soup for the Soul – 33 times; Dr. Seuss – 24 times; Louis L'Amour – 200 rejections; Jack London – 600 before his first story; Diary of Anne Frank.

(Thanks to Dan Poynter www.parapublishing.com)

Other famous self-published authors include:

Deepak Chopra, Gertrude Stein, Zane Grey, Upton Sinclair, Carl Sandburg, Ezra Pound, Mark Twain, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Stephen Crane, Bernard Shaw, Anais Nin, Thomas Paine, Virginia Wolff, e.e. Cummings, Edgar Allen Poe, Rudyard Kipling, Henry David Thoreau, Benjamin Franklin, Walt Whitman, Alexandre Dumas., William E.B. DuBois, Beatrix Potter.

Read the CWG post in its entirety