OLD POST ALERT! This is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date. Please click on Start Here on the menu bar above to find links to my most useful articles, videos and podcast. Thanks and happy writing! – Joanna Penn
Self-publishing is where you do everything yourself from idea to book, or you engage a project manager to do it for you.
· You can get a book printed very quickly after finishing it so it can be ready to distribute and sell within a month.
· You have full control over the whole process, as well as timings.
· You can sell by any means you like e.g. digital, ebook, audio, print, rights to TV.
· You can write for a small niche market that a large publisher would not consider, but you can still make sales.
· You keep all rights to the material.
· More money can be made per book.
· You can test the market and then approach a publisher with evidence of sales.
· You can get into the game and become an author. As you establish your credibility, you can approach a publisher with a later project.
· Your time and effort go into marketing and promoting the book instead of chasing a publisher.
The drawbacks include:
· You need to put up the money for printing, distribution and publicity upfront
· You may have no experience and no contacts in the industry so it will be harder to get distribution and sales
· You might not sell as many books so even if you make more per book, you may make less overall
· Self-published books are not considered as “important” as published books by the literary establishment. (Although on Amazon, it is hard to tell what's what).
· You need to do it all yourself, unless you outsource the management. (This is also a benefit for certain people).
In terms of personality, you need to be more of a project manager in order to self-publish. You have to coordinate a number of things at the same time and if you don’t keep to the list you will not end up with a book at the end of it all.
On a personal note, I self-published “How to Enjoy Your Job” which is for sale worldwide on Amazon.com. I wrote the book andthen started to think about publishing. When I looked at the lead times for traditional publishing, I decided to self-publish as I didn't want to wait 18 months. I will be looking at how to actually get from idea to book on this blog.
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View Comments (1)
Joanna, although I've railed against all the marketers who self-publish and who Twitter, with no regard for what's being marketed, the biggest part of self-publishing is having a real marketing plan. That is, after writing a worthwhile book.
It can be done. I just recently did my piece of typesetting a second edition of a book for which I'd done design and layout on the first edition.
They'd sold the 10,000 copies they'd had printed of that first edition. I like to think it was my design made people buy all out in about a year.