Call 2013 the year of the self-published book, as hundreds of thousands marched to the drummer of their own words on their own terms — and the business world scrambled to catch up and capitalize on the trend.

2013 was a big year for self-publishers. On the heels of 50 Shades of Grey author, E.L. James, who initially self-published her trilogy, many other self-publishing authors have similar dreams of stardom.

According to the Star, self-publishing titles this year alone are in the hundreds of thousands. Compare that to the 20 to 30,000 books being published by traditional publishers a year. It far outstrips that.

With new technology and the addition of eBooks, self-publishing is becoming more and more popular.

Georgie Binks was feeling pretty excited about her first foray into book self-publishing. Then 500 of her books arrived in 23 boxes. She sold them within two months and thanks to short run book printing, ordered 250 more.

One publishing company says there are at least 250,000 titles from self-published authors on their company's site. A year ago, it would have been a quarter of that.

There have been past success stories of self-publishing, but they were rare. With new technology/software self-publishing has never been easier.

Kindle has even sold more than one million copies each of 14 self-published titles this year.

These times will be known as “the glory days of self-publishing.” There’s no financial barrier to publishing a book anymore.

For information on self-publishing, contact The Country Press.

Excerpts - The Star