My friend and fellow writer, David Joiner, sent me these two interesting articles about self-publishing:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/how-i-became-a-best-selling-author-.html
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/10/24/will-amazon-kill-off-book-publishers
With traditional publishers devoting less and less resources to marketing their authors’ work (unless you’re Dan Brown), the advantages of being published by a “real” publisher are slipping. Of course, it lends your work some legitimacy, but as anyone who’s ever read Nelson Demille can attest, being published by a big publisher - or being a US bestseller for that matter - doesn’t prove that your writing is decent.
Since today’s authors are expected to do a lot of self-promotion, some of them are deciding that they’re better off going solo. They self-publish and sell their books cheap online - but keep all of the profits instead of getting only the tiny chunk that a regular publisher would give them.