I'm getting the hang of writing headlines; there's no doubting it now. So, Amanda Hocking has been used as an example of a self-publishing success recently. I'm not sure where that started - and I'm certainly too slovenly to find out - but a hasty Google search showed that she had a piece in USA Today in early Feb mentioning that she'd given up on finding a publisher and was now selling her self-published eBooks in impressive numbers (450,000 in Jan 2011, apparently).

A lot of people seem to be using her example to make their point, so Ms. Hocking has just written a blog post giving her views on 'what it all means'. You could nip over there and read it. Or take a chance that I'm summarising it correctly in the following terse phrases: writing success is hard, self-publishing hard, success uncertain whether published or self-published. you can't copy her and expect success any more than you can copy JK Rowling as a guarantee of riches. she's high volume but her books sell for a dollar. publishers not evil but still, it's nice to have self-published ebooks in the world.

And Ms. Hocking may well be right: just because it's possible to self-publish to a high standard and be very successful doesn't mean it will become mainstream or even particularly common. On the other hand, I view it as an increasingly important alternative channel. Whether publishers see themselves in these terms or not, they've always been gatekeepers. And whether they like it or not, authors no longer need to pass through those gates to reach readers.