After a long day at work as a personal assistant, 28-year-old Nikki Kelly was commuting home on the London Underground’s Central Line when she received an eagerly anticipated email. "I'm not going to read it on the train in case it's a 'no,'" she thought. She was expecting a rejection.
Kelly got off the train two stops early. On the platform, she looked at her iPad and tentatively read the first couple of lines of the message.
The email was from the editor in chief at a prominent children’s publisher. They liked her manuscript.
"I burst into tears," she says. "I was literally standing on the platform sobbing and people were looking at me like I was very strange.”
That publisher offered Kelly a three-book deal with Feiwel and Friends (an imprint of Macmillan) for her Styclar Saga trilogy, a series of young adult paranormal novels that began with Kelly’s first self-published title, Lailah.
Self-publishing used to be synonymous with unprestigious "vanity publishing," where well-off authors who couldn't get their books into print by traditional means paid small, independent presses to publish them. But with the advent of e-books, social reading sites and simple digital self-publishing software and platforms, all that has changed. An increasing proportion of authors now actively choose to self-publish their work, giving them better control over their books' rights, marketing, distribution and pricing.
Other authors, like Kelly, self-publish as a way to bypass the seemingly endless rounds of rejection, particularly when sending books to publishing houses, hoping to get "spotted" once their work rises on the e-book charts.

In December 2012, Kelly uploaded Lailah to Wattpad. With 20 million monthly unique visitors and over 29 million stories, Wattpad has become one of the largest communities of writers and readers on the web.
Lailah racked up nearly 2 million reads on the site and saw huge amounts of reader engagement, including thousands of votes and comments.
Because Kelly’s book, a love story about an immortal 17-year-old girl drawn into a battle between vampires and angels, takes place around the month of December, she decided to serialize it, “so the reader would feel like they were in real time with the story.” Kelly uploaded the story in seven sections, plus the epilogue, which takes place on New Year’s Day, at a minute past midnight on Jan. 1, 2013.
Kelly’s success story and choice to serialize echoes that of another young Wattpad writer. In 2012, then 18-year-old Brit Abigail Gibbs signed a reported six-figure deal with HarperCollins for her vampire novel, The Dark Heroine, after seeing major success on the self-publishing platform. Gibbs used Wattpad to serialize her work as she wrote it, publishing her novel chapter by chapter over a two-year period.
Books serialization was once standard in the publishing industry. In the 19th century, authors would release their work to periodicals in stages. Charles Dickens is often cited as the exemplar of the publishing model, but Alexander Dumas, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Wilkie Collins also popularized serialization.
Although out of fashion for many years, the rise of the mobile and social web has brought serialization back in vogue. Using the strategy, authors can keep readers excited about a story, gather feedback in real time and generate buzz. The piecemeal approach also suits modern reading patterns, as people increasingly consume shorter content on mobile devices, often on the go.
And self-published authors have the most freedom to experiment with such a convention.
Ben Galley, self-published author of The Emaneska Series, cofounder of e-book store Libiro and author of advice site Shelf Help, suggests serialization and shortform fiction suits not just our modern lifestyles, but today’s attention spans.
“We’re busy creatures now, balancing not just busy work and social lives, but a digital life, too,” Galley says. “When time is precious, people are careful what they spend it on. A 150,000-word book might seem daunting, but a short story of 20,000 words might be just the ticket — something to be devoured in one evening before bed.”

Allen Lau, CEO and cofounder of Wattpad.
Image: Allen Lau
Allen Lau, CEO and cofounder of Wattpad, credits Gibbs' choice to serialize as "one of the key factors of her success." With the traditional publishing method, he explains, it can often take two or three years before a book lands in readers' hands, but serialization short-circuits that. “As soon as you finish that first chapter, you can post it [online] and start to generate a fan base, start to generate excitement."
Lau suggests that serialization helps boost the level of reader engagement by increasing the amount of "touchpoints" between the reader and the author. Every time new content is uploaded, readers get a chance to respond.
Kelly and Gibbs aren’t the only amateurs to be spotted by publishing houses. In today’s digital and social age, self-published writers are forcing traditional publishers to sit up and take note. As self-published titles notch up more and more reads and establish a strong, vocal fan base, the traditional shift of power moves from publisher to author.
Galley agrees the connected reading public is forcing publishers to consider indie authors: "In the past few years, we’ve seen readers surge behind one book, and lifting it up to compete with the traditional bestsellers. When that happens, [publishers] have to take notice. It’s almost as if the reading public act as a mass agent, delivering a product straight to an editor’s desk." He points to E.L. James’ 50 Shades Of Grey, Hugh Howey’s Wool, John Locke and Amanda Hocking.

Image: Nikki Kelly
Kelly used her popularity to actively approach agents and publishers when Lailah started gaining traction online.
“If you can go to someone and say, ‘My book’s been on [the web] for six months, look how well it’s doing. Look at my readership. Look what they're saying about the story. Look at how many questions I'm getting about where they can buy this book so they can put it on their shelves,’ it doesn’t hurt!” she says.
The opportunity for readers and writers to directly connect marks a real shift from the established relationship between the two typical publishing parties.
"The readers don't just read the story in a read-only mode; they participate in the content creation process," says Lau. "Some of the comments can absolutely influence the storyline. This type of collaborative content creation and crowd participation simply and structurally doesn't exist in the traditional system."
That shift in power could move authors even further away from the traditional publishers, with the advent of people-powered publishing. Rather than wait for your manuscript to land on the right desk, simply get enough of a fan base behind you and you can create your own hard copy book, with funds generated from the fans.
Wattpad has recently experimented with capitalizing on that reader-writer creation process with a trial program of crowdsourced funding to get Wattpad titles published as "proper" books.
During summer 2013, Wattpad launched Fan Funding, describing it as "a pilot project where readers had an opportunity to support their favourite Wattpad writers in exchange for a range of rewards, like having a character in the story named after them."
Six Wattpad writers participated and each met or exceeded their goals. They raised a total of $20,000 from the wider Wattpad community.
Jordan Lynde is a 19-year-old college student from Massachusetts and one of six authors who participated in the pilot. She was excited about the prospect of seeing a hard copy of the book professionally published, but wanted to maintain control over the editing and production process. She raised funds to publish her teen romance title APR (A Proscriptive Relationship). Lynde saw $8,355 pledged of her $7,500 goal, from 177 supporters.
Authors have also flocked to Kickstarter, perhaps the most popular general purpose crowdfunding platform, to raise funds for self-publishing projects. Since the site's launch in April 2009, Kickstarter has raised an impressive $40,838,529 for publishing projects (as of January 2014). Of the 13,063 projects launched in total, 4,542 were successfully funded, or about 35%.
That’s a much higher success rate for authors than the traditional agent-publisher route, but without an already built-in fanbase (which Wattpad authors can tap), it's not an easy journey.
In fact, figures suggest that today's self-published authors in the digital publishing world are fighting a constant battle to extract money from consumers who often expect e-books to be considerably cheaper than hard copy books, if not free.

Author Nikki Kelly's workstation, along with pug Alfie, in her home office on the outskirts of London.
Image: Nikki Kelly
While self-publishing may be one way to catch the attention of traditional publishers, unless you are one of the writers to get spotted and land a traditional book deal, it’s not a guaranteed money-maker.
A recent Taleist survey suggests the average amount earned by self-published authors in 2011 was just $10,000, with half of survey respondents making less than $500. A more recent survey (PDF) by self-published historical romance author Beverley Kendall found similar results: just 48% made over $10,000 per year.
Many self-published authors drop the price of their e-books in order to inflate sales figures, or offer them free to get exposure. This can be a savvy business plan if you have a series of books to promote, as India Drummond, author of the bestselling Caledonia Fae fantasy series, has discovered.
"With an indie author, the biggest challenge is getting discovered in a sea of other authors, and by giving a book away, I remove a barrier that might stop people from downloading a book by someone they’d never heard of," she says.
Drummond risked offering the first book in her series for free, then charging $3.99 (£2.99) for the following titles. She describes the strategy as "an astonishing success."
Respondents to the Kendall survey also extolled the virtues of free. More than half of those earning over $10,000 per year who offered a free book said it was a major sales driver. The survey further indicated that self-published authors who have multiple titles or series books tend to find more financial success.

Image: Flickr, Annie Mole
Amazon UK bestselling crime writer Kerry Wilkinson started out as a self-published author. Then, when his popularity got him noticed by publishers, he signed a 14-book deal with Pan Macmillan. He has seen the market evolve from both sides of the electronic fence, with publishers dropping their prices to compete with cheaper self-publishers.
"With all those months of 20p e-books, the race to the bottom was officially won by traditional publishers," says Wilkinson.
The “race to the bottom” has taken an unprecedented twist. Traditional publishers are now starting to look at self-publishing platforms and the free e-book model, as a way of promoting their existing authors.
Ruthie Knox, USA Today bestselling author of modern romance novels, is signed to Random House but has offered her forthcoming novel, Truly, for free on Wattpad before the hard copy book hits bookshop shelves.
"Random House had been in talks with Wattpad about the possibility of letting an established author test out the service, and when they asked if I was interested I agreed right away,” she tells Mashable. Knox was curious to see if the experiment would attract new readers from Wattpad’s audience.
While the commercial wisdom of such a move cannot yet be stated, the experiment was a success by traditional engagement metrics, racking up 3 million views and nearly 4,000 comments.
“It's the first opportunity I've had to watch people react to my books in real time — reading to the end of a chapter and spilling their glee, their outrage, their fascination directly into the comment boxes,” says Knox, “and it's also proved to me something that I've long suspected: that readers are game for all different sorts of love stories.”
Lau cites the Truly experiment as a good example of how the traditional publishing and self-publishing industries can work together, stating that many fan comments suggest they are also planning to buy the physical book: “It's not cannibalizing the sales, and we have many numbers to prove it."
Fans' reactions to Nikki Kelly's book deal suggests many plan to buy the hard copy Lailah when it launches fall 2014. This is something Kelly, as a fan of the “real book experience,” can relate to.
“There’s nothing like a real book in your hand, the real paper, the shiny cover and the smell of a book,” she says.
Still, digital and self-publishing has improved the options for ambitious writers. Kelly has since quit her job as a personal assistant and writes her series full time.
And Galley sees a bright future for the industry.
“We get creative control, better royalties, full possession of all our rights, and we get to do it all on our own terms," he says. "We’re more authorpreneurs rather than just mere authors, with businesses of our own.”