Maryville.edu.
What is self publishing?
Self publishing is a form of publishing writings of any form by yourself. It means to skip the process of finding an agent, being rejected (several times maybe) and finally finding a publisher, who will publish your book, your screenplay or other writing of yours. Skipping all these and cutting to the case yourself is hard work and it will require a lot of learning, since you will become the writer/author, marketer, promoter, and publisher yourself. This is a lot of responsibility for one person but many have done it and many have done it successfully.
Why even consider?
Right off the bat it becomes self-evident that self publishing is a lot of work, an uphill battle if you will. So why should anyone even consider doing this? Why not go through the trouble at the beginning of becoming a traditionally published writer/author and save a lot of work later on?
And there are two answers to that. Money and control.
Let’s say you are an author who writes urban fantasy novels, 75k to 100k words long. How much money would you make off books sold if you are traditionally published compared to self published? “Generally, the standard royalty rate for authors is under 10% for traditional publishing and up to 70% with self-publishing” (Yoo, 2023). Let’s say you sold 6,000 copies of a $14.99 book. Traditionally published, you earned $10,740 while self published you made a whopping $34,440. That is a huge difference!
When you sign a contract with a traditional publishing company, you write over the rights to all your characters, locations, etc of that story. That means you can not take the same characters or world and write a new book or series with those, as they no longer are yours. You also do not set the price, decide how much advertising your book gets and what kind. Many things are out of your hands and for me personally, that is a huge ick. After all, no one cares as much about your book as you do.
There is many many resources out there to help you learn how to become a self published author. One of my favorite is the 6 Figure Author Podcast , where Lindsay Buroker, Joseph R. Lallo and Andrea Pearson share all their knowledge and experience as long term self published authors. One of their videos actually covers exactly this subject:
Trad vs. Indi
Traditional published:
-Less work for you
-More time for other things/writing
-Your books will appear in traditional bookstores like Barnes & Nobles
-You are not on your own and have a lot of help from professionals
Self published:
-You keep a way bigger cut of the cake in regards to royalties
-Everything is in your hands
-Better suited for people who love learning and want to make being a writer/author a full time career
-There is so many resources out there today that will help you along the way
The Hybrid
There is always the option to go with a hybrid model, in which you have some books self published, that will get your name out there into the big stores and onto New York Times Bestseller lists etc, and then you publish more books yourself to keep a bigger cut and make even more money.
