“I sold my self-published book” sounds just like a bunch of posts I’ve written on this blog and Unpublishable Pennings (which is another of my blogs) about the publishing industry and self-publishing. Except this time that isn’t just a title, it’s an actual statement of fact. I, Hillary, sold my originally self-published book. And I wasn’t even trying to!

Back in 2003, I self-published a play through Lulu.com (starting a long and mixed history with that company both as an author and later employee) called The Love of Three Oranges that was based off a commedia dell arte scenerio by Carlo Gozzi. I don’t mind telling you that the play has always done very well which has always been somewhat hilarious when you consider that when I first published it I literally had no clue what I was doing. But as it kept selling and was performed all over the world it never occurred to me to try to traditionally publish it because, as they say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

What changed my mind? How did the publication process come about? All good questions. 😉

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to blog about the behind the scenes* process that went into this and why I decided it was worth it to let a middle man into my already working business model because I think it would be a helpful contribution to the ongoing traditional publishing versus self-publishing debate. Also, complete transparency is kind of how I roll. In the meantime, you can read the announcement on this on my other website here.

*=Behind the scenes with the business end of it and my thoughts. I’m not going to share anything confidential from the contract or anything. I just wanted to clarify in case my publisher was reading this and having a heart attack.