With the launch of Archway, Simon & Schuster hopes to get a piece of the rapidly growing self-publishing market. According to Bowker, over 235,000 books are self-published annually — up 287 percent since 2006. (The actual figure is likely higher since Bowker only counts titles with ISBN identification codes. Titles published without them — like ebooks offered exclusively through Kindle — are not included.)

Free self-publishing services, like Smashwords and Amazon’s KDP, focus on ebooks, while Author Solutions emphasizes print and retail distribution and has higher prices and lower ebook royalties. Archway’s “fiction” publishing package, for example, ranges in price from $1,999 to $14,999. That includes ebook distribution, but Archway authors can’t choose an ebook-only publishing option for now, though the company may add one later. Archway will pay an ebook royalty of 50 percent of net sales, so if an ebook is distributed to Kindle, for example, an Archway author would receive 50 percent of the sale minus Amazon’s 30 percent fee.

Archway is offering services like a “concierge” — “a dedicated publishing guide who will coordinate each step of the book production process” — and access to a speakers bureau. Archway titles will be included in the booksellers’ catalog Edelweiss. And Archway authors “will have the opportunity to create high-quality videos and book trailers for distribution” to the online video networks that Simon & Schuster works with, like Roku and Blinkx. Simon & Schuster is not hiring any staff; services like the “concierge” will be provided by Author Solutions.

Simon & Schuster will monitor the sales of Archway titles and may sign some authors for traditional publishing deals. In recent months, the publisher signed self-published romance authors Jamie McGuire and Colleen Hoover. “We’re excited that we’ll be able to help more authors find their own path to publication and at the same time create a more direct connection to those self-published authors ready to make the leap to traditional publishing,” Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy said in a statement.

Penguin acquired Author Solutions for $116 million in July, but the company continues to operate independently and “Penguin is not involved in any of our partnership businesses,” ASI CEO Kevin Weiss told me. ASI already operates white-label self-publishing services for Harlequin and HarperCollins’ Thomas Nelson, for example. “We have an agreement with [Penguin] that all of our partnership businesses are confidential,” Weiss said. “Prior to [a book] being in distribution,” Penguin can’t see it and it is “sealed off behind our firewall…I informed Penguin that we are launching this deal, but I did not get their permission.”

Flat-Out Love by Jessica Park

Here’s a good way for a book to become a New York Times bestseller: Have Jeff Bezos mention it on Amazon’s homepage. That’s what happened to self-published author Jessica Park, whose YA novel Flat-Out Love got a shout-out from Bezos on June 18. This week, it hits the NYT ebook bestseller list for the first time at #25.

Park co-writes the “Gourmet Girl” mystery series with her mom, Susan Conant. That series is traditionally published by Penguin. But Park self-published her first YA novel, Relatively Famous, as well as some e-singles. She tried to sell Flat-Out Love to a traditional publisher “because I had it in my head that I needed that big-time validation,” but when it didn’t work she self-published instead.

Flat-Out Love is $3.99 on … Amazon Kindle | Barnes & Noble Nook | Apple  iBookstore | Smashwords | Kobo | Sony | Diesel

Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire

Another self-pubbed book, Jamie McGuire‘s Beautiful Disaster, is #9 on the NYT ebook list this week and #24 on the USA Today list. Beautiful Disaster, a romance about college students Abby Abernathy and Travis Maddox, is McGuire’s fourth self-published book. It’s told from the point of view of Abby, but now McGuire is working on a version from Travis’s point of view. The Oklahoma mom is also expecting her third child in the fall, so after that she’ll take some time off and then start working on another book, Red Hill, about a mother’s survival of the zombie apocalypse. “It’s going to be fun, I love zombies, and I can’t wait to write it,” she says.

Beautiful Disaster is $2.99 on … Amazon Kindle | Barnes & Noble Nook | Kobo

And don’t miss…

• Sylvia Day’s Bared to You, the first book in an erotic self-published trilogy snapped up by Penguin in May, hits the NYT print paperback list this week at #4. It’s #6 on the ebook list.
• Dean Koontz has written a series of e-singles to build excitement for his upcoming Odd Apocalypse, to be released by Random House on July 31. The first teaser single, “Odd Interlude #1,” was released June 11 and is #15 on the NYT ebook list this week. The second, “Odd Interlude #2,” was released June 18 and is #11 on the NYT ebook list and #27 on the USA Today list. “Odd Interlude #3″ was released on June 25.
• Tracey Garvis-Graves, whose self-published romance “On the Island” was featured in this column in April, is the subject of a Wall Street Journal article this week. Penguin bought On the Island this month in a seven-figure, two-book deal; a paperback edition is due July 10. In the interlude, On the Island dropped off the NYT bestseller list this week.

New York Times bestseller list, week of 7/8/12

Here are the titles in the top-35 that appear on the e-book bestseller list, but not on the print bestseller list (click the link to expand the chart).

USA Today bestseller list, week of 6/28/12

USA Today includes all formats and genres in one list and notes which format of a book sold best. Here are the titles in the top-35 where e-books outsold print (click the link to expand the chart).