Bookplanet: Self-publishing success stories

Two summers ago, Cara Mayo, then 13, was inflicted with a common teenage disorder: boredom. But unlike most idle youth, she started writing. The voracious reader of Tolkien and Rowling dreamed up an entire alternate world, populated by wolves and wild birds. She wrote on a laptop at night, while the rest of her family slept. A few months later, she had a complete novel. ''I was actually amazed that I finished the whole story,'' said Cara, who lives in Coral Gables and is a 15-year-old freshman at Gulliver Prep. "I didn't have any thoughts about making it into a real book. I just wrote it because I was so bored that summer.'' Ten--even 5 years ago--it's doubtful any teenage novelist would have the ''real book'' idea. Standard operating practice for aspiring writers has long been to stick the first effort in a drawer and start another one. But that's so 20th century. Print-on-demand technology, which allows books to be printed only when they are purchased, has reinvented self-publishing, and erased a lot of the financial risk associated with so-called ''vanity'' publishing. Cara's summer project became a book after her mother, a writer herself, read it and thought it worthy of a wider audience. ''I always got lost at the end because I was so wrapped up in the story,'' Christina Mayo said. "I would forget it was Cara's.'' More here. Over in England, some self-publishing writers have had amazing success. Check out their stories here and here. Via Moby Lives.