As an author, I get a lot of questions from people who are interested in self-publishing. Here are 5 questions and their answers to help you to understand what self-publishing is all about. I hope that this will inspire you to become a self-published author.
Q1: What is self-publishing?
Self-publishing is the preparation and issuing of media for public sale without the involvement of an established publisher. Self-publishing usually refers to written forms of media such as books, magazines, newsletters, and journals. The publication of written media could be as an e-book or as a physical book.
Q2: What’s the difference between self-publishing and traditional publishing?
Before I explain the difference between self-publishing and traditional publishing, you first need to understand what traditional publishing is. The term traditional publishing has to do with an established publishing company which buys the right to publish an author’s book and pays the author royalties through their book sales.
The difference between self-publishing and traditional publishing is that a self-published author is responsible for the publishing, editing, cover design, and marketing of their book. But the author owns the rights and royalties and gets to keep 100% of revenue generated from their book sales. Therefore, the book is self-published.
On the other hand, if the publishing company has purchased the book’s rights from the author, then the book is traditionally published. The publishing house takes on the responsibility of designing, publishing, distributing and marketing the author’s book. The publishing company is the one that determines the percentage of royalties that will be paid to the author.
Q3: What are the advantages of self-publishing?
- The author has complete control over the way the book is written, edited and designed.
- The author does not need to hire a literary agent to present their book to publishing houses.
- The author is able to publish their book and get it into the market faster.
- The author can specialize in writing for a particular niche, which publishing houses would not be interested in.
- The author gets to keep all the revenue generated from their book sales.
Q4: What are the disadvantages of self-publishing?
- If you do not have the budget to pay for professional services, you will have to take on the burden of designing, editing, formatting, publishing and marketing your book yourself.
- If you do not have marketing skills, it will be very difficult to attract potential customers to buy your book.
- It is very difficult to get reviewers to review your book.
- You will have less time to write because most of your time will be spent trying to market and promote your book.
Q5: What advice can you give to people who want to self-publish?
- Do not publish the first draft of your book. Go through your book again and fine-tune your work until you feel it is at a publishable standard.
- Get professional help with proofreading and editing your book and with the design of your book cover.
- Create a website so that you can promote and sell your books directly from your site.
- Make sure your book is available on the major booksellers’ websites such as Amazon.
- It is very important that you start thinking about marketing your book before you even publish it. Develop a marketing plan early so that when you are ready to publish your book, you will be able to start marketing immediately.
- Do not rush through the self-publishing process and do not cut corners. Take your time and make sure that your book is properly edited and the cover design looks professional. Make sure that your book looks just as good as the competition.
