A Self Pub Book on the Grocery Store Shelves?

Last night I was picking up some groceries when I noticed an author's book, who I knew to be self published, was on the shelf in my local grocery store. You may have heard of him, John Locke. No not that one old dude who's the father of classical liberalism and long dead, I'm talking about the extremely successful self published author John Locke. He's known for his Donovan Creed series, and wrote a book called "How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months!" That title says it all about his success self publishing eBooks. I thought he must have signed with a big publisher, because of course that's the only way he could have a book in the grocery store right? Only the best sellers are on the shelves there, they don't have much shelf space. So I picked up the book and looked inside to see what publisher he was with now, thinking here goes another self published author signing with the big six. It's not something I look down on, but I can see how someone would stay with self-publishing if they're making the kind of money John Locke has been making. I've been curious to see what the authors who have self published with amazing success will continue to do. So far I've seen a lot of them signing with a big six New York publisher. They usually still self publish other books as well, but I thought that they might all end up signing up. Not John Locke! To my surprise the publisher of the paperback I found in my local grocery store was John Locke Books. I thought, wait how can he do that? I made a mental note to look it up online later. A late night stop for some groceries became an intriguing and exciting trip. That was a couple nights ago, and last night I found this blog post on John Locke's website. It turns out that it is published under his own imprint, so he has full control over it, but Simon and Schuster is distributing his books. As far as I know this is a first in the publishing world. The book is not a long one, which is probably why he's able to sell it for only five dollars, but for the price of a Frapuccino, let's all support this self published author getting on to the grocery store shelf! This is big time stuff for us authors who like the idea of self-publishing and having full control of our work. The majority of his sales might remain in eBooks, but being in the grocery store and the book store in paper means that you're pretty much everywhere and that has to be getting him new fans that have never heard of him before. I'm really excited about the whole idea, and to think not long ago we could not have imagined something like this being possible. Go snag a copy at your local store, it is called Wish List and can be found at Barnes & Noble, Wal-Mart, airport bookstores, Walgreens, and others. I saw it on the shelf at Safeway. Let's hope the book does well so more self published authors can find their way in paper onto the shelves of book stores and grocery stores.