Self-Publishing for Smart People

Q: What is an example of something really stupid that you tried?

A: When I self-published my first book, The Art of Seeing Double or Better in Business, I received over 50 defective copies. Of course, every problem is an opportunity. So I had the defective copies cut in half. I sent either the top half or the bottom half with a copy of a creative sales letter to major corporations. If corporations wanted the book, they had to buy a minimum of 10 copies.

This idea ended up making me an additional $15,000 in revenues from book sales and the seminars about creativity that I was hired for. Furthermore, I ended up getting valuable publicity in two newspapers about this truly unique marketing technique. One of the articles took up almost the entire front page of the business section in The Edmonton Sun. (A full-page advertisement would have cost $5,000 and not have been one-tenth as effective.) This free publicity later helped me sell copies of my signature book The Joy of Not Working (now over 325,000 copies sold).

Q: Apparently most traditionally published books sell fewer than 500 copies in their lifetime. What's the key to having a bestselling book?

A: Simple but not easy: Write a remarkable book — one worth making remarks about! Just to be clear, however, these are the 5 Rs of a Remarkable Book:

♥  Remarkable Title

♥  Remarkable Subtitle

♥  Remarkable Cover

♥  Remarkable Content

♥  Remarkable Promotion

If you don't have all of these, take my advice, you ain't going to make a decent living in the self-publishing business. You will do much better either growing turnips or sawing wood for a living. 

In this regard, Mark Twain advised, "Write without pay until somebody offers pay. If nobody offers within three years, the candidate may look upon this circumstance with the most implicit confidence as the sign that sawing wood is what he was intended for."

Q: Which of the 5 R's of a Remarkable Book is the most important?

A: Remarkable Content is the most important of the first 4. But Remarkable Promotion is just as important as Remarkable Content. As I said in my first book, that was about creativity: "You can have the best product in the world, but if you can't market it — you may as well have the worst product in the world." Getting back to books, I have been saying this for years: 

CONTENT MAY BE KING BUT PROMOTION IS THE SUPREME EMPEROR!

Q: Are you the expert on this? 

A: No, there are individuals who are much more intelligent and knowledgeable than I am. For example, check out Author Marketing Strategist Charlie Hoehn  who has helped several authors sell over 1,000,000 copies of their respective books. In 2025, I paid Charlie $1,000 for a one-hour consultation. He may have learned just as much from me as I learned from him. But the $1,000 was well spent.

Q: What did you learn from Charlie Hoehn?

A: Don't be a penny-pinching pauper. Hire him yourself for an hour of consultation. The image below is of a YouTube video in which Charlie is giving advice on how to create a bestselling book such as Atomic Habits by James Clear.

You can also check Charlie Hoehn's 12 Tests To Maximize Your Book’s Potential To Sell A Million Copies. Here is a summary of Charlie's criteria for a book to have a great chance at selling a million copies. (I give my answers for How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free. Of course, I may be extremely delusional and that may be the reason that the book has sold only 475,000 copies so far.) 

Test #1: Are You The Embodiment of Your Book? ♥ Yes

Test #2: Does Your Book Create a Category? ♥ Yes

Test #3: Is Your Book Insanely Valuable?  ♥ Yes

Test #4: Does Your Book Transform The Reader? ♥ Yes

Test #5: Is Your Book Accessible to The Masses?  ♥ Yes

Test #6: Will People Talk About Your Book?  ♥ Yes

Test #7: Is Your Book Timely and Timeless?   ♥ Yes

Test #8: Will Your Book Become Part of the Reader's Identity?  ♥ Yes

Test #9: Is Buying & Gifting Your Book a No-Brainer? ♥ Yes

Test #10: Are You and Your Book Media-Worthy?  ♥ Yes

Test #11: Will You Successfully Launch Your Book? * No, I am lazy. 

Test #12: Will Your Book Get Ongoing Massive Distribution? * No, the book only has US Bookstore distribution with Simon & Schuster

Q: What type of book promotion is the most effective? 

A: First, book promotion is 10 times as difficult today as it was over 37 years ago when I self-published my first book. In my opinion, the best promotion involves using techniques that no one else — or few people — are using. My previous success has been a result of 75 of my own unique "marketing" techniques that 95% of authors and so called "book marketing experts" — not to mention AI — are not creative or clever enough to come up with. These "marketing" techniques involve what my competitors are NOT doing — instead of what my competitors are doing. 

A few years ago book marketing guru John Kremer on Facebook said he was looking for more ideas for the new edition of his book 1,001 Ways to Market Your Books. So I sent him a few of my marketing techniques — which I didn't think he would use. Surprisingly (to me), he did a blog post about some of them titled Ernie Zelinski: Creative Book Marketing Strategies. Of course, sending John Kremer some of my marketing techniques was another marketing technique to get me publicity in the new edition of his book. As it turns out, I got publicity on his blog post too.

Alas, a lot of my unique techniques and those recommended in John Kremer's 1,001 Ways to Market Your Books  no longer work. So for marketing the 25th Anniversary Updated Edition of my flagship book How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free, I am in the process of generating a lot more — many of which I won't think of for at least a year or two. 

Q: If you are so good at book promotion, why is your website so ugly?

A: I am glad that you asked. This goes back to over 20 years ago. When the Internet was in its infancy, I took a course about Internet marketing at the Internet Marketing Centre in Vancouver. There the expert said that ugly websites make more money than great looking websites designed by professional web designers. Many years later, at the Author 101 Conference in Las Vegas, Tom Antion, who was earning over $500,000 a month from Internet marketing proclaimed, "I make my cheap websites intentionally ugly — and my $100 or $200 websites will outsell the $1 million websites every day of the year."

Things haven't changed all that much over time. Marketing guru Seth Godin much more recently informed, "Pretty websites . . . are rarely websites that convert as well as unpretty ones." In other words, Seth was saying that ugly websites generally make more money than great looking websites designed by professional website designers.

Q: I don't believe a word of what you say about ugly websites making more money. How can that be?

A: Whether you believe the truth or don't believe it — the truth still remains the truth. I created several ugly retirement websites that helped How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free to become the bestselling retirement book in the US bookstore market. Furthermore, check out the website of Kevin O'Leary (Mr. Wonderful) and that of billionaire Warren Buffett and his trillion-dollar Berkshire Hathaway Corporation. 

The point is: If Warren Buffett doesn't require a professionally designed website, neither do I. Insofar as Mr. Wonderful, his flashy, expensive website hasn't helped him sell as many of his books as I have sold of mine. Remember that he is much more famous than me and has a much larger platform. His book was also published by a major publisher.

Q: Why does your advice sound so much different than that of a lot of experts in the field of self-publishing?

A: I believe in telling the truth. In this regard, Baltasar Gracián, the famous Spanish Jesuit priest and philosopher, observed, "Truth is abhorred by the masses." The Greek philosopher Plato also warned, "No one is hated more than the person who tells the truth." 

Nevertheless, because I have my own way to rock, I am going to tell the truth about the book business that the haters and losers don't want to hear. Indeed, I follow the advice of this fine gentleman:

"Many people, especially ignorant people, want to punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct, for being you. Never apologize for being correct, or for being years ahead of your time. If you're right and you know it, speak your mind. Speak your mind even if you are a minority of one. The truth is still the truth."  — Mohandas Gandhi

Q: Why don't you share all your book promotion techniques with everyone else?

A: To put things in perspective, I defer to my favorite artist. When Pablo Picasso was in his 80s, he was sitting in a Café in Spain, doodling on a napkin. He was nonchalant, drawing whatever amused him. Some woman sitting near him was looking on in awe.

Several minutes later, Picasso finished his coffee and crumpled up the napkin to throw away as he was leaving. The woman uttered. "Wait!" Then she asked, "Can I have that napkin? I'll pay for it" 

"Certainly," Picasso replied. "That will be $20,000."

"What? It took you about 2 minutes to draw that," said the woman. "No, ma'am," Picasso declared. "It took me over 60 years to draw this." He stuffed the napkin in his pocket and dispassionately strolled out of the Café.

In the same vein, it took me over 35 years to come up with my unique marketing techniques. As Pablo Picasso said, "That will be $20,000." 

Just to be clear: That will be 20,000 US dollars and not those limp, mediocre Canadian dollars. Yes, I don't come cheap — buy I'm a bargain at 3 times the price.

To add to why I won't share my unique marketing techniques, allow me to quote Richard Bach who proclaimed in his blockbuster book Illusions: "Learn what the magician knows and it's not magic anymore." 

Here are 3 major reasons why I won't share my marketing magic for free:

1. If I share my unique marketing techniques for free, a lot of people will start using them and the techniques will become ineffective and worthless.

2. Worse, some sleezy so-called book marketing experts will claim that they came up with my techniques themselves and try to profit from them. Trust me, there are a lot of unscrupulous people in this business.

3. Just as bad, all my techniques will eventually appear on AI in some form of Generic Slop — that the freeloading and bottom-feeding Certified Full Goose Bozos (CFGBs) in this business will greedily soak up with glee. 

Q: What's the easiest way to become a successful writer and self-publisher?

A: Follow The EZ Rule of Life.

Q: What the heck is The EZ Rule of Life?

A: It’s a basic principle of the universe and a very powerful one indeed. The degree to which we adhere to The EZ Rule of Life will determine the satisfaction and happiness we achieve throughout your whole lives. The principle is so important that I wrote an inspirational fable about it called Look Ma, Life’s Easy, which was published in 5 foreign languages (French, Chinese, Spanish, Korean, and Russian) before it was published in English. (See photo on the left of all editions.) 

The EZ Rule of Life is represented in the diagram below:

The essence of The EZ Rule of Life is straightforward: If we do what is easy and comfortable, life ends up being difficult and uncomfortable. The vast majority of writers and self-publishers choose this because short-term comfort seems more appealing than the alternative. But one problem with a comfortable life is that it has few payoffs in satisfaction and properity.

Unfortunately, most of us gravitate toward less pain and more pleasure. Choosing the easy way, however — the one with much comfort and pleasure — ensures that we wind up in a rut. The only difference between a rut and a grave is the dimensions. In the rut we join the living-dead, and in the grave we join the dead-dead.

If we do the difficult and uncomfortable, however, life ends up being easy and comfortable. The 10 percent of individuals who take this route know they must experience short-term discomfort for long-term gains. By undertaking difficult and uncomfortable activities, they experience satisfaction and accomplishment in their lives. 

Q: How does The EZ Rule of Life relate to writing and self-publishing?

A: This is a letter I drafted in 1993 to respond to people who would write to me for advice about getting a book written and published. Most of it is still relevant today. It's about doing the difficult and uncomfortable instead of doing the easy and comfortable.

Dear Aspiring Author:

So you want to be a successful writer with a bestseller or two.

Contrary to what most people believe, I don't have a secret formula for making a book a bestseller. However, I can offer some basic advice which I consider extremely important for creating a bestseller.

Many people like yourself have contacted me because of my success with my self-published book The Joy Of Not Working. This letter is being sent to all people who contact me about writing and self-publishing so don't take these statements personally.

First and foremost if you want to write a bestselling book because you think it is an easy way to fame and fortune, do yourself a favour by pursuing something else immediately. Writing a book and making it a bestseller is much more difficult than getting an undergraduate university degree, going on to a masters degree, topping it up with a doctorate degree and finally landing a job as hard as it is to land a job today.

Don't believe me? Just remember that there are a lot more people with doctorate degrees than there are people who have written bestselling books. Besides if it was so easy to create a bestselling book, practically everyone would be doing it. If you haven't noticed, about 99% people always take the easy way out in life. That's why they will never have a bestselling book.

Here is the second important test: How good are you at celebrating failure and being motivated by criticism and rejection? Creating a bestseller will require that you accept and celebrate failure. Why? The road to success in any field of endeavor normally involves many failures before there is some success.

Therefore you have to be able to accept and celebrate failure. Writing and promoting a book to make it a bestseller will require that you are not only able to cope with, but more importantly, be motivated by criticism and rejection. For example, when The Joy Of Not Working made The Globe and Mail's list of books that definitely would not be reviewed by their book section, this motivated me to show them that my book would outsell 99% of all the books they review.

If you have passed the above two tests with flying colours, then there may be hope for you. Now go out and buy all the books you can find on publishing and promotion. (Note I said BUY these books, not borrow them — if you won't buy someone else's books, why should you expect anyone to buy yours?) Then read all these books and learn everything you can about writing, publishing and promotion. David Chilton, bestselling author of The Wealthy Barber, read over 30 books on publishing before he had his book published.

Next, what are you going to write about? The most important principle here is to select a topic for which there is a market. You have to first ask yourself: "Who is going to want to buy my book?" Then you better have a damn good answer.

Just because you think people should be reading books in your chosen topic does not mean there will be a market for your book. Don't fall into the trap like so many people (including editors with major publishers) who go on the basis of what they think other people should be reading. Your opinion of what is important or what ought to be important to people is totally irrelevant. The people who buy books are the ones who will decide what is important to them. This is the way it should be; it's their money.

If after formal or informal market surveys you have concluded there is a market for your book, you need to find a publisher or decide to publish it yourself. (How you go about this will be covered in the 20 or 30 books you are going to read about writing, publishing, and promotion.) When the publisher has been established, make sure you write the best possible book in your chosen field.

Don't look at the books in your chosen field and say "I could have done that." Instead look at these books and say "I could have done better." Then do it better!

Once you have completed a book and had it published you are about 5% of the way there to making it a bestseller. Whether the book is self-published or published by a major publisher, you must promote your product. You can have the best product in the world, but if you can't market it, you may as well have the worst product in the world. The best promotion for a book is not done by publishers, distributors, or bookstores; the best promotion is done by the author.

Writing a good book takes creativity; effective promotion takes ten times as much creativity. Two years after I wrote The Joy Of Not Working I am still promoting the book with the same level of effort and creativity as when the book was first released. I will be doing this for at least another 3 years.

Another very important point: You have to start by doing. All the knowledge in the world is not going to help you if you don't do something with it. As the Buddhists say: "To know and not to do is not yet to know."

Finally, I could wish you luck but I won't — luck is not what will get you there.

Your own motivation, determination, and creativity will get you there.

Sincerely,

Ernie J. Zelinski

Q: You are always quoting famous people. Does anyone ever quote you?

A: Yes, in fact, "I often quote myself," as George Bernard Shaw declared. "It adds spice to my conversations." (I would like the world to believe that George Bernard Shaw stole that line from me — but most of the world knows that I am not that witty.)

Having said that, other people do quote me. For example, check Page 29 in How Successful People Think by John C. Maxwell whose books have sold over 20 million copies. Apparently Mr. Maxwell has quoted me in 3 of his books.

Another example: Have you ever been quoted in the first sentence of an article on a Business School Website? I have! Check out the artcle Entrepreneurial Spirit, Ethics, and Eagle Poses talking about Ariana Lily Nikmanesh’s journey from the Business School to an invitation to the White House. The first sentence says:

International bestselling author Ernie Zelinski once wrote, “Trust not what inspires other members of society to choose as a career. Trust what inspires you.” 

To add to this, Google "Quotes by Ernie Zelinski" and you find several webpages quoting me that I had nothing to do with.

Q: What has changed since you first self-published your first book in 1989?

A: In some ways a lot has changed and in some ways not so much has changed. It was difficult to become a successful self-publisher way back then; it's 10 to 100 times as difficult today due to a number of reasons. 

What hasn't changed much is that most people who want to become successful self-publishers think it's easy and aren't prepared to put in the work required. Also, a lot of people entering the field of self-publishing just don't have the 3C Vision required. Instead they possess 3D Vision, which consists of the three elements of Distortion, Delusion, and Denial. That's why so many writers get scammed nowadays by con artists claiming the ability to help writers succeed.

Bestselling author J.A. Konrath (whose books have sold in the millions) said it best about the various programs being sold to writers and self-publishers: "Selling hope to the hopeless is big business." In this regard, Benjamin Franklin warned:  "He that lives upon hope alone will die fasting."

Q: Is it possible to earn a million dollars from writing a book?

A: Yes, it's possible — but extremely difficult. Very few writers willl ever do this. My guess is that not more than 25 people have ever done this in Canada and fewer that 1,000 people have done this in the US. According to Politico, while defending his disclosed millionaire status, Senator Bernie Sanders made this comment in April 2019 to The New York Times: 

“I wrote a best-selling book. If you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too."

I am not convinced Bernie Sanders made $1 million from his book. Fact is, even if you write a best-selling book that sells over a million copies, you may not earn a $1 million from its sales. I say this this as a self-published author who has earned over $1 million from my flagship book that has sold only 475,000 copies. In fact, it has earned me over $2 million in pretax profits. 

However, how much an author earns from their book depends on the royalty schedule, whether the author had an agent, and the various formats (hardcover or paperback) the book was published in, including foreign editions that pay relatively low royalty rates.

The photo above shows the original edition of HTRHW&F on the left and the 25th Anniversary Updated on the right. Because things has changed so much since I brought out the original edition 25 years ago, my marketing techniques have to be much different than I originally used.

The figures below give an indication of the publishing buiness today.

Self-Publishing by the Numbers from Self-Publishing dot com

♥  In 2025, approximately 4,172,222 ISBN-registered titles were published in the United States (an average of 11,430 a day). 

♥  This represents a 32.5% jump over 2024, making it one of the largest single-year surges in publishing history.

♥  Print still dominates by volume and revenue, but audiobooks have quietly overtaken eBooks in US market share, marking a historic shift in how Americans consume books.

♥  Globally, print books accounted for approximately 78% of total book revenue in 2025.

♥  In the US, the eBook share of trade revenue has actually remained flat or declined slightly since its 2014 peak, settling at around 10% of trade revenue.

♥  Today, Amazon accounts for roughly 60–70% of all online book sales in the United States for eBooks and at least 40% of all physical print book sales in the United States.

♥  The average traditionally published book sells approximately 300–500 print copies over its lifetime in US retail channels.

♥  Three-quarters of American adults read at least one book per year, but the median reader finished only two books in 2025, and deep reading divides fall sharply along lines of education, gender, and age.

♥  Books selling more than 100,000 copies represent just 0.01% of total publications.