This excerpt from the article “Common Mistakes by New Authors,” by Irene Goodman of the Irene Goodman Literary Agency, appeared in the September 2010 issue of Romance Writer Report (RWR) published by Romance Writers of America:
“It’s always sad when an earnest author spends years working on something that absolutely no one is interested in except a few geeks or hobbyists. Let’s say you want to write historical fiction. You need to understand that unless you are writing something very literary and high quality, you must pick a marquee name. If you fall madly in love with the life story of an obscure Norwegian king, please don’t think that you are going to convince the world to love it, too. Commercial historical fiction is very female-driven. Even if the Norwegian king had some kind of interesting hook or quality to him, readers are more likely to be interested in the queen.”
At the time, I wondered if the jab could possibly be aimed at me since my book “A Prince of Norway” was scheduled to release soon ~ and I had been blogging about it. In the event that it was, here is the follow-up to that article:
In July 2012, Romance Writers of America’s Board voted to allow self-publishing authors to achieve PAN status (Published Author Network) if they earned $5,000 in royalties off at least ONE title.
I have. I applied. I was immediately granted PAN status ~ the first author in Arizona to do so. And the book that got me there?
I love it.
KrisTualla's Author & Writing Blog 
Good on you, Kris. You deserve your success. Savor the sweetness.