[fjtorres]

Heh, it looks like Turow inspired a *lot* of folks.
As always, Ms Rusch does it in detail and style:
http://kriswrites.com/2013/04/10/the...nti-published/

A few choice quotes:

The problem with Turow in particular, and a handful of others in the same circumstance, is that they were bestsellers from their first novel. Which makes them rather like that Coach Barry Switzer quote: “Some people were born on third base and thought they hit a triple.”

From Lawrence Block:

My default response, when someone asks how to get an agent, or how to find a publisher, or any writerly version of what-do-I-do-now, is to suggest publishing it oneself. That’s a course I never would have recommended to anyone, except perhaps the occasional dotard who’d penned a memoir he hoped his grandchildren would read. And now I’m urging it upon everyone—writers whose publishers have dropped them, writers who never had publishers in the first place, writers whose early books have gone out of print.

Will everyone have a good experience with self-publishing? No, of course not, nor will every book show a profit. But it has never been so easy for readers and writers to find one another, and for any book to find its proper audience.

Quoting Elizabeth Naughton:

She writes:

…when deciding what to do, I had to take a lot of things into consideration. Book stores are closing, store shelves are shrinking, and my print run between ENRAPTURED and ENSLAVED (only six months!) dropped by 20,000 books. There was no guarantee Wal-Mart (who was the biggest buyer for my print books) was going to pick up the next book in the series, and at 4% royalties (most people don’t realize authors get reduced royalties from sales at Wal-Mart, so at a $4.99 sale price, I make less than 20 cents a book on my Wal-Mart print sales) I couldn’t come up with a valid reason to take a crappy contract JUST to say I was “traditionally” published. Especially when I looked at the fact the MAJORITY of my sales were coming in digital form. If there’s one thing I want readers to understand, it’s that this was not an easy decision for me to make, but at the end of the day I realized that if I wanted to continue writing this series (which I do!), I couldn’t do it for free anymore.

She decided, as so many of us have, that the only way she’ll accept a traditional book publishing contract these days, is to have a “contract would have to be enticing enough to draw me away from the income I’m now making.”

That income? It’s exploding for her:

To give you an idea of how my life has changed since I began self publishing, in 2011 (traditionally published only) I reported a negative income on my taxes. In 2012 (after I began self publishing–and it’s important to note that the majority of my income that year came from self published books, NOT my traditionally published books), I reported six figures. In 2013, we’re projecting I’ll be approaching the seven figure mark. To me, that’s a HUGE difference.
It’s important to note that she hit the New York Times bestseller list with her self-published work, not with the traditionally published work. We’re seeing this phenomenon more and more these days. That whole meme that traditional publishing puts out there, the one that says they’re the only way into bookstores and the only way to hit the bestseller lists? That meme isn’t true at all.

Plenty more at BUSINESS RUSCH.
Worth a weekly visit just to see what the established *writers* are seeing and what they're doing when it comes down to betting their livelihood.