Ben Franklin self-published. So did Jane Austen, Walt Whitman and Marcel Proust, according to James McGrath Morris, whose essay covers the history of self-publishing and the rise and fall of the vanity press: "In each of these eras, authors have continued to bring out their own books, even if they recognize that the cards seemed stacked against them. In great part, it is because of a widely held suspicion among writers that editors don’t always recognize a great work."
February 24, 2015