Advantages & disadvantages of self-publishing

First, the disadvantages

The most obvious disadvantage of self-publishing is that you have to pay for everything yourself up front and you receive no advance. Your profits, if any, will come after months, and perhaps years, of marketing efforts for which you will be responsible.

Marketing your book can be challenging. If you are traditionally published, the publishing house will add your book to their catalog, send out galleys for pre-publication reviews, and do a certain amount of advertising. When you self-publish, it’s up to you to let the world know about your book, and it will be difficult, but not impossible, to get into book stores and libraries.

There is also the (unfair, we believe) stigma of self-publishing. If you had to resort to publishing it yourself, how good could it be?

Many people turn to self-publishing after their search for an agent and/or publisher has yielded no results. Just because you can’t get an agent or a traditional publisher interested in your work doesn’t mean it’s dreadful. Traditional publishers are looking for books they’re sure they can sell. If you’re writing for a niche audience, if they think your book is too long, too short, not enough like what was hot this year, too much like what was hot this year, they may not consider your book worth their while.

If you can get a traditional publisher, or an agent who can get you a traditional publisher, you will be faced with another set of problems and challenges. It may well be the best choice for you, but there are some advantages to independent publishing that you should know about before you sign the contract.

What is independent publishing?

From now on we will refer to self-publishing as independent publishing.

We’re not referring to "helper" publishing here. Now we’re talking about you becoming an independent publishing company.

Independent publishing is a term borrowed from the film industry. Independent films are not assumed to be trash. In fact, there is a huge market for them. They are made by people who may be constrained by small budgets, but they are not constrained by the needs of the giant film studios and their demand for blockbusters.

Independent publishers consider themselves to be the publishing equivalent of independent filmmakers, and many of them are putting out quality products and finding a readership that traditional publishers have overlooked and underserved.

And now, the advantages

You can have it all your own way!

You can choose your title, your cover, your book design, and you can set your own price. Traditional publishers usually control all of these things. They may let you have some input, but the final decision will be theirs.

No one will dispute you over your book’s content. No one will ask you to make the hero more handsome or the heroine less abrasive, and you won’t have to convince an editor that you really did mean to split that infinitive.

Because you have total control of your project, you may make a few mistakes, but at least they’ll be your mistakes, and not mistakes made by someone else on your behalf and without your input.

You will own all the rights to the work you created. You will own the foreign rights, the electronic rights, the movie rights.

You will usually make more profit on each book and you may not have to wait as long to get paid as you would with a traditional publisher.

You can edit your work whenever you want, put out a new, updated edition whenever you want. And now that you own a publishing company, you can publish a book whenever you want.