Southfield-based psychotherapist and attorney Terry Shulman — shown here at The Print Gallery in Southfield — has self-published books on compulsive spending, shoplifting and employee theft.

His three self-published books help establish Terry Shulman, 44, a Southfield psychotherapist and part-time attorney, as an expert on theft and spending addictions, he says.

In a profession where most of his clients aren’t local, having a national reputation is imperative.

Seven years ago, when Shulman looked for a traditional publisher for his manuscript about shoplifting addiction, he failed.

So he turned to the print-on-demand company Infinity Publishing in West Conshohocken, Pa.

Selling about one-half of the books himself and the others through a wholesaler or online booksellers such as Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com, he has sold 4,000 copies of Something for Nothing: Shoplifting Addiction and Recovery. His other two books on employee theft and compulsive spending have each sold 1,000 copies. Within nine months of publishing his first book, he was on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

Meanwhile, Sylvia Hubbard, a 38-year-old Detroiter, has self-published 14 romance novels, all as e-books and six as paperbacks. Three paperbacks have sold more than 10,000 copies.

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