It’s the kind of Cinderella story every author dreams of.

The Wall Street Journal reports bestselling, self-published author Hugh Howey signed a six-figure, print-only deal with Simon and Schuster. The unusual deal allows the author to keep all digital rights.

Of course, unlike most authors, Howey had plenty of leverage to negotiate a deal to his liking.  His thriller, “Wool,” has sold more than a half-million copies.

According to the WSJ, Howey was already raking in $120,000 a month, so he had little incentive to give away digital rights.

Other self-published authors, like romance novelist Bella Andre, have also negotiated print-only deals. Again, Andre had plenty of negotiating power, since she’d already sold 1.5 million copies of her books on her own.       

Click here to read the full article.

Last year, romance novelist Nyree Belleville was dropped by her publisher. Today, she might tell you it was one of the best things to happen to her writing career.

The author of 12 titles under the pen name Bella Andre, the most Belleville made from her books through her publisher was $21,000.

Depressed, she decided to try self publishing her work. At first, the profits trickled in. Before long, they were gushing in. According to The Washington Post, after the first few weeks, Belleville made $281. The next month it was $474. When she self-published a new ebook in July, she made $3,539.

So she started publishing manuscripts she’d written years earlier. By the end of her first quarter, Belleville had sold 56,008 books, raking in $116,264.

If that doesn’t make every unpublished writer want to run out and self-publish, I don’t know what will.

But wait.

The article by Neely Tucker also includes some more sobering statistics. Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords.com says in the article, “We have less than 50 people who are making more than $50,000 per year. We have a lot who don’t sell a single book.”

The article also quotes Jeff Belle, Amazon’s vice president of books. “There are a lot of books, even low-priced, on Kindle that are not selling at all.”

Oh.

Well, that’s a downer. Still, given the changing publishing landscape, and the success of self-published authors like Belleville  and Amanda Hocking, all writers – published and unpublished – should probably be exploring all of their options.

Read the full article here.