While doing some research on the book biz, I stumbled across this amazing list of bestsellers that started out as self-published titles.
Here are just a few of the many surprising entries:
- A Time to Kill, by John Grisham
- The Beanie Baby Handbook, by Lee and Sue Fox
- The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. (and his student E. B. White)
- The Joy of Cooking, by Irma Rombauer
- The Celestine Prophecy, by James Redfield.
- The One-Minute Manager, by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson
- What Color is Your Parachute, by Richard Nelson Bolles
One Comment
This list is a good start. For a more thorough list of books that began as self-published tomes, check out Dan Poynter’s site, http://www.parapub.com. There is a complete list of books that one can download for free. There are scores of books that were originally self-published. And, in case you didn’t know it, Dan Poynter is the “dean of self-publishing.” He’s been successfully self-publishing for over 30 years.