One of the themes of 2012 has without a doubt been the rise of self-publishing.

Regardless of how you measure it, self published books have had a huge impact on the publishing world in 2012. We’ve seen multiple deals where a self-published author was picked up by a major publisher after already banking huge ebook sales. And if you look at the top-selling books of 2012 several of them started out as self-published.

Today we saw another first for self-publishing. A self-published work was named to the best-books of the year list of the highly respected and ultra-tough book reviewer for the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani.

Self-publishing was once “vanity publishing,” something that you did if you just couldn’t cut it with a traditional publisher. And it certainly wasn’t big business. All that’s changed. Self Publishing today is big business, in fact in 2012, it was $100 million.

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

Forbes