![]() Should You Self-Publish Your Book?A Chapter by Rob Bignell![]() More books now are being self-published in both paper and digital forms than mainstream publishers are putting out. What are the pros and cons of self-publishing?![]() During these tough economic times, publishing houses are printing
fewer books and cutting back on the number of editions they print. In addition,
there already are a sparse number of magazines printing short stories, novellas
and serials. As a consequence, many good writers who’ve written good books and
short tales simply aren’t being published. Because of this, a number of beginning and entrepreneurial writers
have turned to self-publishing as an alternative way of getting their book in
print. Though long reviled as a vanity press, more books now are being
self-published in both paper and digital forms than mainstream publishers are
putting out. The advantages of self-publishing are numerous: >>You’ll actually get
published - You can bypass the literary agent, magazine editor and the
publishing house and quickly get to your destination, which is to see your name
and book in print. It’s fast, too; within a matter of hours you can have your
book up for sale online. >>You can make more
money - Your royalties will be higher if you self-publish. In some
scenarios, you can earn more than half of the book’s retail sale price by
self-publishing whereas mainstream publishers give you less than 10 percent of
the earnings. The result is you only need to sell a couple of thousand
self-published books as opposed to tens of thousands of mainstream published
books to achieve the same profit margin. >>You control the
book - Publishing houses and magazines can limit how you promote your book
and your ability to reuse material from it. By being your own publisher, you
can use the book however you like to promote your business or causes. Of course, there are some downsides to self-publishing: >>It can get
expensive - Self-publishing is less expensive than you think; many authors
do it for less than $40 a book. But if you need your cover designed, the text
proofread and edited, and the book formatted " and if you want be the publisher
of your book rather than CreateSpace or Lulu.com " the costs can rise into the
hundreds if not thousands of dollars. >>Some readers and
critics won’t give your book the respectability it deserves - A bias still
exists that books printed by mainstream publishers or stories in magazines sold
at stores are better written. After all, if you weren’t good enough to work
through a major publisher’s vetting process, why should your writing be given a
look at by anyone else? Because of this, most newspapers and magazines won’t
review self-published books. >>You need to market
the book - Making sales requires a concerted effort on your part at
marketing your book. A website, a blog, tweeting and a Facebook page mark a
good start, but it’s probably not enough to sell hundreds of copies of a book,
at least not in a matter of a few days or weeks. As many writers simply don’t
enjoy marketing, they often give up too early on their promotional efforts.
You’ll still have to market your book if you go through a traditional
publisher, but arguably the promotional mountain is steeper when you
self-publish. Given the existing (though fading) bias toward self-publishing, I
always recommend that writers first try the traditional route to getting their
works in print. Set a time of six months and see if a literary agent,
publishing house, or magazine editor is interested in your work. If they are,
congratulations! If not, don’t despair. Instead, self-publish. Indeed, one route to
finding a literary agent and publisher is through self-publishing. The magic
number appears to be 5,000 … that is, if you can quickly sell 5,000 copies of
your book, you probably can catch the interest of a literary agent or a
publisher. If you don’t sell 5,000 books, still don’t despair. Instead, get
working on that next book. Perhaps that one will catch on " and then readers
will discover that masterpiece you’ve previously written. You Do It Presumably you have in mind a manuscript that you’d like to see in
print. Given that you’ve also purchased this book, presumably you plan to
self-publish it! Congratulations! You literally are only a few hours of work
away from being a published author. On your computer desktop, create a folder
and place your manuscript in it. This will be your working folder for all the
materials you need to self-publish. Next, create a word processing file for
taking “to do” notes from this guidebook. © 2013 Rob Bignell |
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Added on November 12, 2013 Last Updated on November 12, 2013 Tags: self-publishing, novel, literary agent, royalties, marketing Author![]() Rob BignellHudson, WIAboutI'm the owner and chief editor of Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the editing and proofreading needs of writers both new and published. Several of his short stories in the literary and .. more..Writing
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