1. Rachael Herron
Bestselling New Zealand author Rachael Herron published her first book in the Cypress Hollow series in 2008 with HarperCollins. She desperately wanted to leave her job and write full time, and was able to do that in 2016 with subsequent titles.
She got the publishing rights back to eight of her books: seven novels (many of them thrillers) and her first memoir, A Life in Stitches, which she subsequently self-published.
Her 2024 book, Unstuck: An Audacious Hunt for Home and Happiness, was Kickstarter-funded.
2. Michael Anderle
I’m honestly surprised Michael Anderle isn’t on the top of most successful self-published authors lists. He has nearly 900 books with his name in the byline. Although he had dreams of becoming an author as a teenager, he didn’t publish until he turned 47.
He self-published Death Becomes Her in 2015 as a bucket-list project, then followed it with five sequels within 3 months. The Kurtherian Gambit series is 21 books long.
In a year, he was making six figures. He attributes his success to strategic social media efforts and networking with fans who were aspiring authors themselves; he included author notes in his ebooks.
Anderle launched his own publishing company, LMBPN, in 2016, which has published over 3500 titles across mostly female-driven fiction series. It operates on a high-volume, rapid-release model, releasing 10–12 books monthly.
He also started a Facebook group named 20Booksto50K® to help indie authors and fans learn more about self-publishing. The group currently has over 81K members and has hosted a series of conferences for self-publishing writers along with author Craig Martelle, who’s featured in this post.
3. Bella Andre
Bella Andre was a traditionally published author with 7 titles in 2010 before she ventured into self-publishing. After selling a romance trilogy, she had high hopes for her next three-book installment. Her editor informed her that she couldn’t get the approval to contract the new trilogy.
She decided to self-publish one of her out-of-print novellas, Take Me, as an ebook. Over her career, she’d collected several hundred emails and wrote each reader a personal email that said, “Here’s the book that you’ve been wanting that my traditional publisher did not put out, and here’s how you can get it.” The book hit the top 25 bestseller list of an online retailer.
She established her own indie publishing house, Oak Press LLC, in 2011, named the fastest-growing indie publisher in the US in 2014 by Publishers Weekly. She wrote and released new romances, landing on The New York Times bestseller list with three of The Sullivans books, the first cover of which she designed herself.
She caught the attention of nearly every major publisher and landed a deal with Harlequin MIRA for the print rights.
Bella handles the marketing and publicity for her ebooks almost single-handedly and has sold over 10 million copies. She also writes under a second bestselling name in romance, Lucy Kevin.
4. Craig Martelle
After retiring from work as a business diagnostics specialist and leadership coach at 52, Craig Martelle started writing science fiction novels full time.
At 13, he’d received rejection letters from publishers and didn’t want to experience that again, so he self-published It’s Not Enough To Just Exist, a post-apocalyptic survivalist story set in Alaska, using Amazon KDP in 2015. It was later retitled and published as the first book in the End Times Alaska series.
A traditional publisher picked up one of Martelle’s series in 2016. While that helped, he says his greatest successes were all independent titles. He hit the $50K mark with his 19th book without a single breakout title, although he’s had some Amazon bestsellers.
Martelle’s since written hundreds of books and sold over 1 million copies. He also runs the Facebook group 20BooksTo50K with Michael Anderle.
5. H.M. Ward
H.M. Ward began self-publishing in 2011 when she felt the traditional model didn’t suit her and her genre: YA PNR (young adult paranormal romance). She published her first traditional romance, Scandalous, in 2012.
She said in an interview with ACX:
“The people who read it really liked it, but it didn’t really do anything impressive. I tried another stab at romance and wrote Secrets. Initially, those flopped too. It was pitiful. I was about to forget the whole romance thing, but I decided to give it one more shot. I recreated the covers for Secrets, switching to something more traditional, and they got some traction. It was very noticeable. A book cover is like a stop sign. It needs to clearly communicate as much as possible about the book in a blink. Artistic covers don’t work well for romance.”
Within a few weeks of the cover change, Scandalous hit The New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists. When Damaged hit the virtual shelves, she received emails and letters from fans. She made sure that the audiobook was a priority because of how the story spoke to people; she completed it within the first few weeks of the ebook and paperback going live. She later landed a book deal for the series.
Ward has since sold over 10 million books, reaching the #1 spot with The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Amazon. She’s hovered in TNYT bestseller list with 18 different titles.
She attributes her success to her interaction with fans on social media, audiobooks, events, and giveaways.
6. Russell Blake
After selling his first company, moving to Mexico, and winding down a second company, Russell Blake started self-publishing in 2011 with his first action/adventure title, Fatal Exchange. He said in an interview with Robert Bidinotto in 2011, “I bombed for the first seven months and eight or nine books, and then caught a tail wind in February 2012.” That book was The Manuscript, the first book in The Delphi Chronicle trilogy.
In five years, he’d sold millions of copies. He has over 50 titles to his name.
7. Joanna Penn
I love Joanna Penn‘s podcast, The Creative Penn. Not only does she interview authors, but she always has her finger on the pulse of the publishing industry. From 2005 to 2007 she wanted to write a self-help book and decided to self-publish when she discovered how slow traditional publishing was.
She self-published How to Enjoy Your Job or Find a New One in 2008, which was republished as Career Change in 2012. She found her author friends on Twitter in 2009 and started her podcast the same year. OG podcaster in the house!
She published her first novel, Pentecost, in 2011, which was later re-published as Stone of Fire, the first in the ARKANE series. Based on the income she received from her blog, book sales, speaking, and downsizing, she left her job to become a full-time author-entrepreneur. She had 100,000 people visiting her blog monthly, 8000 subscribers to her podcast on iTunes, 35K followers on Twitter, and a substantial mailing list.
She also signed with a literary agent who helps her land traditional book deals, but many of her titles are self-published.
In 2014, she began publishing fiction and nonfiction under different names, with fiction under J F Penn. One Day in Budapest was in the ARKANE multi-author box set that hit The New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists, selling over 100,000 copies in the few weeks it was available.
By 2015, she began making six figures from her writing and then multi-six figures in 2016. I love that she made it easy for me and broke down her entire publishing journey here!
Photo: J.D. Lasica
8. Chris Fox
Chris Fox started writing at age six and published his first book at 24. He says his first novel, Yuri Silvertongue and the Violet Spire was terrible, but he kept writing on and off until 2013.
In 2015, his nonfiction book, 5,000 Words Per Hour: Write Faster, Write Smarter, became an Amazon bestseller and is the first in the Write Faster, Write Smarter series. Shortly after, his 2016 novel Destroyer (first in The Void Wraith Saga) sold thousands of copies in its first month.
Are you noticing a pattern that many of these authors write series?
Chris has published over 20 novels. He’s most known for the Write Faster, Write Smarter series, and he’s spoken all over the USA about writing to market, making your writing a habit, and quitting your day job to become an author—though his true love is science fiction and fantasy.
He makes six figures annually from his books.
9. Patty Jansen
Based in Australia, Patty Jansen started self-publishing in 2011 when she put up short stories from a trade publication that had reverted the rights back to her. She knew little about publishing series and branding and didn’t understand their importance until late 2013 when she made more of an effort towards completing and branding book series.
While her most successful self-published series is the Ambassador series, she’s also published the Icefire Trilogy, Moonfire Trilogy, the Ghostspeaker Chronicles, and the Dragonspeaker Chronicles.
Like Joanna, she chronicles how she makes an income from self-publishing here. Thank you, Patty!
10. Lindsay Buroker
Lindsay Buroker did everything from flipping websites (what? Is that a thing?) to blogging to SEO to selling beef jerky on eBay (what?!). She self-published her first steampunk fantasy novel, The Emperor’s Edge (Book 1 of The Emperor’s Edge series), in December 2010.
By August 2011, she had three novels, two novellas, and a couple of short story collections out. She broke the $3K per month mark in earnings and quit her day job, downsized her life, and headed off to travel on a modest budget. Death Before Dragons, Dragon Blood, and Fallen Empire are her other bestselling series.
She started the Savvy Self-Publishing blog because she’d tried just about everything in her early months of book promotion and wanted to share her knowledge with other authors. It’s still up, though not quite updated.
She also publishes steamy science fiction romance (exclusive to Amazon) under Ruby Lionsdrake.
Stay tuned for Part 5 in this series…I’m a do my best to make it to six parts!
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