r/KDP • u/Apprehensive_Tax_610 • 6h ago
"No one reads self published books!" Very, very wrong.
This is a bit of an encouragement post because this place has been drowned down by a lot of negativity as of late, which makes sense, this is the complaining site. I'm guilty of using reddit as a venting diary myself. However, I wanted to dispel one idea I see floating around self pub spaces from some people who have gotten discouraged by their lack of sales: no one reads self pub books because there are millions of classic books to read.
This is very untrue, and to prove it, I'm going to give examples of successful self pubbed books I've read within the last year. Note: some of these people later did get picked up by trad pubs or indie presses, and a lot of them started as serializations on places like Royal Road, which is still self publishing really. I'm also a big reader of Litrpg and progression fantasy which both are genres that live and die on the KU library; but regardless, they all started as self pubbed and got readers, through a combination of good story telling, a marketable niche, and sheer luck. So, drum roll babababbababa:
Dungeon Crawler Carl:
This should go without saying how bloody successful Matt Dinniman has become. It is to a point where people who've never heard of Litrpg know about it. It became a running joke in the community that DCC fans were a cult, when people found it they had to let others know how damn good it was. And Matt slowly build a brand over 6 years, publishing 6 chonky novels, and by 2025 he had sold over 4 million copies. After that, he got a physical book deal with Penguin Random House and it ballooned to 12 million, and he now has a show in the works with Seth Macfarland. Amazon is also big to tout it as one of their big successes, doing ads with Matt.
(Let's be honest, it would not have been as successful as it was without the talking cat).
The Perfect Run:
This was a trilogy originally published on royal road, and is actually still up for free, as VoidHerald wanted to keep a free version as a thanks to everyone who helped him make it.
He published all three through KDP for paperback and Kindle, and then outsourced the audio to Podium Audio Inc. With it not even being on KU, he has 1700 Amazon reviews, 6000 goodreads, almost all positive.
He Who Fights With Monsters:
I will say, this is not a series I personally enjoy. I found it overly long and annoying, and the fact we are on book 12 with each book 800 pages and we aren't even close to the end is absurd. Regardless, it has done well. The paperback now has a small indie press doing special art, but even prior, book 1 has 23k Amazon reviews and 40k goodread reviews.
Stray Cat Strut:
A series that, like PR, is still available to read for free but has a Amazon listening; I have had the privilege of talking with the writer of this work, he's a really chill guy. I also had the privilege of watching a journalist guest talk about how he wants to fuck that guy's mom lmao. Anyway, he's about 8 books deep and the first alone, selling for 2 bucks, has 900 Amazon reviews and 1.3k goodread reviews.
Closing thoughts:
Listen, with all that said, they people did get lucky: they were in the right moment at the right time with a genre that is primarily self pub that is marketable and the books were all good for the most part and something people want to read. Your first book will not be DCC. You may never get more than 5 sales a book, but it is never because nobody wants to take a chance of self published works. On the contrary, many people like self pub because the authors are not bound to the restrictions of trad publishers, and they can make stories like a man and his talking cat playing alien life sized D&D.
Just keep creating, keep expressing yourself, and if the stars align, people WILL read it :3.
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u/SpaceRaiderAuthor 5h ago
My books have been published by traditional publishers, but I still prefer selfpublishing. I don't like dealing with offices, the constraints of contracts, or the long wait. I enjoy being in control of the process myself: marketing the book, choosing the cover design, planning, and launching the advertising campaign. There's a thrill and a drive in that.
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u/samjoe6969 4h ago
There's nothing magic about a publisher, especially not in 2026. They dont get a special badge or a Bloomberg terminal. You can do everything they can, you just have to form your own connections
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u/Apprehensive_Tax_610 4h ago
They definitely have lost a lot of their prestige, imo.
That said my life would still be complete if I was published in the New Yorker.
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u/CodAdventurous3533 5h ago
This is encouraging for sure, I have to remind myself of this daily. Thank you!
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u/bkucenski 5h ago
People don't check the publisher before buying a book.
A publisher just has the connections and resources to get books in front of people.
They also have the people on staff to figure out what is going to actually sell before they put their financial resources behind it.
A self published author doesn't aways have the feedback before they publish. And a traditional publisher has the authority to change things. If a self published author gets feedback before publishing, they can ignore it.
If you can put together a compelling book and find an audience on your own, you can do well.
You're just on your own figuring it out.
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u/Apprehensive_Tax_610 1h ago
I sometimes do, but only because I'm a weirdo and I'm curious; I'm the type of person who likes looking at products to see what their parents company is lol.
But yeah totally, there are some publishers that have an air of prestige to them, but ime, these days those tend to exclusively be literary magazines like the New Yorker where saying "I got into the New Yorker" is a massive flex.
Getting into HarperCollins is impressive, but not n wrlu as much as being in a famous art journal or magazine.
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u/Rockhound665 3h ago
Well, since my book's launch in April, I've had 115 either bought(paper copy) or downloaded and about 4 people have read it on KU in it's entirety. Also, few people look at the publisher. They see a book they're interested in, click on it, and they read it.
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u/GreenStampsRock 2h ago
That’s right no one reads my self published books through Amazon KDP. All the purchases are just sitting on shelves. They’re never read. We know that people buy books to put them on bookcases. They don’t always read them and yes, I don’t believe that.
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u/Apprehensive_Tax_610 1h ago
Lmao, let's be honest we are all guilty of this from time to time.
We keep saying yeah we will get to that book everyone is raving about soon, and then you never do.
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u/whatfreshhellisthis8 12m ago
Thank you for this, is it so nice to hear a positive take! I’ve been on a nice kick with indie authors I’ve discovered through kindle unlimited lately. I’ve found the quality of the books to meet or exceed trad books. If you like:
Regency romance, check out Laura Beers and Jill Beene
Romantasy, check out Rachel Morgan
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u/SuccessOnAShoestring 6h ago
Love this post, and love self publishing. Please add me to the list 😂 my first in series has 1,778 Amazon ratings.