Previously published books won't count -- you do indeed have to publish new books.
If you are self-publishing NEW books (they don't have to be written new, I found it was very handy to write a lot of books early on and then save them for publishing at the later parts of the career tracks), and it still is not counting try going to another neighborhood -- zone to another part of the map, then go home again and try to self-publish.
If that still doesn't work, try going to another zone, and back, this clears any glitchy cached display data apparently -- write new books and try to publish them.
If this still doesn't work you've uncovered some new kind of bug.
