Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do ya?

What’s the best retirement plan?

1.  SAVE & INVEST

2. BUY LOTTERY TICKETS

What’s the best health care routine?

1.  EAT HEALTHY FOODS AND MOVE ENOUGH TO BURN SOME CALORIES

2. WAIT UNTIL A PROBLEM SHOWS UP AND LET THE SURGEON SORT IT OUT

What’s the best approach to selling the book you’ve written?

1. RESEARCH, QUERY, QUERY, QUERY, GET AGENT, SELL, WAIT?

2. SELF-PUBLISH

The answer to all of these questions is, while any answer MAY be correct sometimes, the first and hardest answer is best MOST times.

You may think only the lucky get an agent and sell to a real publisher and see their books in print, but the truth is, the real luck is those who self-publish and actually make a success of it.  Of course, where it gets fuzzy is defining the term “success.”  And I’m not going to scoff at anybody’s definition of success.  If having a book in print (or epub) that your friends and family can buy, that you can put on Amazon or other sites and point people to, if this feels like success to you, go for it. If every time somebody you don’t know buys your book and even leaves a positive review or sends you a nice email, you feel vindicated for cutting through the red tape and publishing yourself, I won’t argue with that. These are real, tangible things.

But if success means selling in the thousands and making money in the thousands, yeah, you’ve raised the bar on difficulty by skipping the validation of the traditional publishing route. It happens, but oh so rarely.

So I ask again…

Read what Adrian Zacheim says about it today in The Myth of Self-Publishing. And thanks to Jason Pinter for bringing it to my attention.

ETA: This entry is a top story on The #Selfpublishing Daily today. Thanks!