Here’s an interesting article on self-publishingby the San Jose Mercury News. Unfortunately, they got the fact about John Grisham and A Time to Kill wrong.
As Grisham explained to me in 2006, A Time to Kill was published by Wynwood Press. The company went out of business and he purchased the remaining copies. He then sold the book himself, famously out of the trunk of his car. When I worked at Square Books, we had a special event T-shirt with a quote on it from Grisham that told of how he learned it’s harder to sell books than write them. So he did work like a dog to sell his first novel. He did schlep around all the inventory.
But he did not self-publish the book.