Publishing news on the Web is mainly a copycat, me-too proposition, fertilized with very little original news-gathering.  Thus, though newsletters and websites about publishing and the ebook phenomenon abound, the stories tend to merely repeat what another site or newsletter has already said (change a few words and publish it as your own story). That's why the names of self-published novelists Amanda Hocking and JA Konrath are currently popping up all over the Web as examples of extraordinary success, while many other impressive success stories are ignored, or, perhaps more accurately, nobody bothers to dig them up and publicize them. One of those stories concerns Elle Newmark, author of historical novels. 

Elle Newmark is a writer who, after years of rejection by traditional publishers, self-published her first novel.  A blog on her website, a rather long one, covers her efforts to market her self-published first novel and the remarkable strategy she used that ultimately got her noticed by agents and publishers and resulted in an amazingly good deal for that novel and a following one.  This all took place in 2009 so it isn't exactly breaking news, but what annoys me is that when sites list successful self-publishers, she and others with impressive histories are not listed.  Why her success was particularly impressive is because of the extended and doggedly committed efforts she invested to achieve it. 

What this has to do with you and me is, her experiences were so discouraging that a less-determined person would have given up long before her efforts got her where she wanted to go.  The title of her blog is Never Never Never Give Up.  Go read it when you are saying to yourself, What's the use?