Self publishing distribution?

door

For anybody who knows the business well or has experience in this I am interested to hear how self published authors have managed to distribute their work and get on the shelves in places like Easons, Reads, Dubray, Hodges Figgis etc..

Thank you.

onewhogroks

In my experience, these self-published authors have distributed their work by doing one of the following:

A) Successfully self-marketed themselves and got enough online sales which earned a contract from a traditional publisher who, in turn, got them into book stores or

Paid a print-on-demand service for a bulk amount of their own book and then used some contact they may have to get it in a book store (or just went to a friendly independent book store) who put their books up for sale

I am sure there are other ways, but these two are the most common I've heard of.

I work with a media company who are also involved in ePublishing.

Hedgemeister

My last book was self-published and managed to get it onto the shelves at Easons - I don't remember exactly how much they kept from the price of each copy, but it was about 40%.
But fair play to Easons.
I got the promotion/exposure which is important to a writer.
Privately owned (Irish) book-shops refused to take any copies, but maybe they were waiting for Stephen King to show up?
Is that why they're all gone to the wall?