The Wikipedia article on self-publishing is fairly extensive. I wasn’t aware of the various forms of self-publication or past authors that succeeded through their own means.
True self-publishing
True self-publishing means authors undertake the entire cost of publication themselves, and handle all marketing, distribution, storage, etc. All rights remain with the author, the completed books are the writer’s property, and the writer gets all the proceeds of sales. Self-publishing can be more cost-effective than vanity or subsidy publishing and can result in a much higher-quality product, because authors can put every aspect of the process out to bid rather than accepting a preset package of services.
While it’s likely to be old hat, I’m quite proud that I was able to endure all the challenges of creating a book from scratch.
Cool Hunting covers TPOPWTPOT
Cool Hunting covers my self-published monograph.
Thanks to Evan Orensten and Jose R. Mejia of Cool Hunting / Large Tail.