Paul Millerd

Paul Millerd is an independent writer and self-publisher best known as the author of The Pathless Path, a book about leaving the default career track that he self-published in January 2022 and has sold more than 86,000 copies. He is known in indie circles for publishing every sales and royalty number openly and for turning down traditional publishing deals to keep running his own one-person publishing business.

Millerd earned a B.S. in industrial engineering and management from the University of Connecticut and an MBA plus an M.S. in systems engineering from MIT. He spent about ten years in strategy consulting, including organisational change and operations research work at McKinsey & Company and Boston Consulting Group, and was working at an executive search firm in New York on CEO succession when he quit in 2017 with no income lined up. At the start of 2018 he moved to Taiwan without a plan and stayed in Asia, living nomadically in more than 50 places since.

He has written a newsletter about our relationship with work since 2017 and now has more than 26,000 readers. His early income came from freelancing and from Think Like A Strategy Consultant, a course and company training program that he says produced 61% of the more than $1 million he earned in his first eight years on his own. The Pathless Path changed the mix: by October 2026 it had sold 86,873 copies across all editions and languages, earning $404,933 in royalties and direct sales from the English editions, according to his live sales page. A premium clothbound hardcover launched in October 2025 has brought in over $54,000, and a fifth-anniversary edition is due on January 22, 2027.

He published a second book, Good Work, in 2024, and runs the Pathless Path podcast, a paid community and a merchandise store. He says Penguin offered $70,000 for The Pathless Path after it took off, and that he turned down a $200,000 two-book deal from Portfolio in April 2024 to stay independent.

Millerd matters to indie makers because his open data on self-publishing and solo income is one of the most detailed public records of what a book-led creator business actually earns.