Self published to bestseller

Tomorrow I'll be doing a self publishing talk with Pentangle Press at Winchester Writers' Fesrival. We'll be talking about editing and preparing books for self publication.  But I've also prepared some case studies of successful self-publishers.

I knew the SF authors I was researching had become successful after self-publishing their books, but I'd always been under the impression that they were marketing experts.  I'd got it into my head that you had to do a lot of hard work on the dark arts of marketing to get noticed.

What I found when I researched these three case studies was something very different.  What all three had in common was that they'd shared the beginnings of their novels on social media before picking up their publishing deals.

Hugh Howey released the start of his book Wool as a 99c ebook.  Encouraged by its success, he later released the complete novel as an ebook.  At this point he was approached by an agent, and later signed the first-ever print only deal with a major publisher.

Andy Weir, author of The Martian, first released his book chapter by chapter on his blog.  When he started receiving requests for the whole story he released it as a 99c ebook.  Again, an agent approached him, and he secured a six figure advance with Random House.

Becky Chambers crowdfunded the writing of The Long Way to A Small Angry Planet.  She submitted the finished book to traditional publishers and was rejected, so she self-published.  Her book was the first self-published novel to be nominated for a Kitchsies' Golden Tentacle  award for best debut. Hodder and Stoughton bought the book and it was nominated for an Arthur C Clarke award in 2016.

Researching these authors' successes has shown me a way forward should my own novel Combined Cognition  be rejected when I send it out on submission later this year.  I envisage finally having a use for a Facebook author page, which could then link to a new blog where I share my book's chapters.  If these three authors can achieve success via social media, then so can I.