Self-Publishing

Yesterday I ragged on vanity presses–and for good reason. Many of them are outright scams, and others operate in a very shady zone.

I want to make it clear, though, that I don’t diss self-publishing at all. In fact, I’ve considered it myself.

What happens in self-publishing is that you basically start your own publishing house.

Why would you want to do that, though, when there are lots of publishers out there already?

If the answer is that your manuscript won’t be accepted by a professional publisher then that’s usually a bad reason to self-publish. It usually means that the manuscript isn’t up to professional standards. (It can mean that the manuscript is aimed at a very small market that the big publishers don’t serve, but then there are lots of small market publishers who you could sell it to.)

Here’s the best reason to self-publish: You stand to make more money. By being your own publisher, you get to keep all the money the publisher usually keeps. Hence, you stand to make more.

Only maybe not. Standard publishers already have established publicity and distribution chains set up, and you’d be building one from scratch. Unless you have a really hot product, you likely couldn’t sell as many copies.

On the other hand, if you do have a hot product, you may be willing to push the product in a more aggressive way than an existing publisher and you might sell more copies.

You might even sell enough that the book trips a big publisher’s radar and they get interested in purchasing the rights from you to print an edition of it themselves.

So why wouldn’t you want to self-publish?

Because in exchange for getting to keep the money a publisher usually does, you also have to do all the things a publisher usually does, as well.

This means that you have to (or pay someone to):

• Observe the legal requirements needed in your state to create a new business.
• Edit your manuscript.
• Copyedit your manuscript.
• Proofread your manuscript.
• Typeset your manuscript.
• Design the cover for your book.
• Get blurbs for your book.
• Find a printer.
• Negotiate with the printer.
• Shepherd the book through the production pipeline.

And that’s only the beginning! After your book gets back from the printer, you’ll have to (or pay someone to):

• Write ad copy.
• Design ads.
• Purchase places for ads.
• Contact booksellers.
• Obtain placement with booksellers.
• Try to get the book picked up by major distributors (not the same as booksellers).
• Fulfill orders.
• Do your own book keeping.
• Pay your own taxes.

Aaagh!

And those are the reasons I ultimately chose not to self-publish.

I want to write, not be a publisher.

But I wanted to make it clear that I don’t have anything against self-publishing. It can be very profitable and respectable–or a total disaster.

If you’d like to learn more about self-publishing,

GET THIS BOOK.