When I told my oldest daughter that I was writing a book, she said, “That’s great, Mom. You should self publish.”

I was deeply offended by the suggestion. Self publish? Only writers who can’t get a traditional publisher to buy their work self publish. And this may have been true five years ago. Today? Not so much.

Today, The Writer is full of articles about writers who have sold their work to a traditional publisher, but then choose to publish their novels themselves. Writers like L.J. Sellers. She used a retirement account to self publish two of her novels, The Baby Thief and The Suicide Effect in August of 2010. By the end of that year, she had sold more than 10,000 copies of her novels. In May of 2012, she signed an 11-book deal with Amazon Publishing.

David L. Robbins has written 10 novels, two screen plays and his third novel, Scorched Earth, was adapted for the stage. He is a prolific writer who chose to leave the traditional publishing house and publish The Devil’s Water with Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer Imprint.

I think Joe Konrath should be crowned the king of self publishing. According to his blog, he has sold more than 6,000 ebooks and had over 1300 borrows on Kindle since March 1. Even he is amazed with those numbers. In his own words, “While I love bookstores and the traditional publishing world, I’ve discovered that I can have greater control over my own work, and make more money, by releasing my ebooks and print books on my own. This also means I can write more novels and stories per year…”

Could there be a better reason to self publish than that?

Man! My kid is smart.