Should You Self-Publish Your Book or Find a Traditional Publisher?
So you have a brilliant idea for a book and you’re wondering if you should seek out a publisher or go the self-publish route?
For a long time, self-publishing meant most likely having a much lower quality book, and the fear of having a garage full of unsold books you couldn’t get rid of.
But much of that has changed these days.
Print-on-demand services like KDP and IngramSpark alleviate the fear of the garage full of books and no longer look like you got them done at the local Kinko’s (does Kinko’s even still exist?). And services like IngramSpark mean that your self-published book can be requested at many bookshops around the world without you needing to worry about distribution.
And now that ebooks have become a dominant market, you can find software that make it really easy to create your own beautiful ebooks without needing to outsource. (Vellum and Atticus are two we recommend on our resources page).
If you have an audience to sell to, self-publishing can be a great route to take!
Some Pros of Self-Publishing
🤑 Royalties. You get a lot more per book sold. I personally make roughly $7-8 for every paperback or digital copy of Extra Focus sold on Amazon (quite a bit less for audiobooks though).
🤝 Full Ownership. I can do whatever I want with my book. I can give away copies, sell it direct to customers from my own store, do any sort of weird promotion or bundle or whatever I want without needing to get permission from a publisher.
🤔 Control / Decision-making. One of my biggest fears of using a publisher is getting a book cover I didn’t love—I’ve heard horror stories of authors embarrassed of their cover, making it hard for the to find motivation for marketing their book. With self-publishing, you get to make all those decisions!
⏳ No Deadlines. No one is going to be breathing down your neck, mad that you didn’t finish the latest draft in time.
Some Cons of Self-Publishing
No Deadlines. No one is going to be breathing down your neck, mad that you didn’t finish the latest draft in time and… that means you have to create your own deadlines! You’ve got to find your own motivation or your book will never get done. This is hard work.
Responsibility. Uh oh, you “get to do anything” because you have to do everything. It’s just you. You’ll need to make a million decisions that all feel important but you never quite feel like you have all the information required.
No Editorial Help. With a publisher, you’ll usually have an editor assigned to you and maybe even other roles that can help you with the book publishing process. When you’re on your own, you have to find and hire those people yourself: editors, proofreaders, designers, audio engineers, and more are possibly people you may need to hire for part-time help.
Up-front Cash. Because of needs like editing, proofreading, design, etc. you will need to have some up-front funding to be able to cover things like that, and many other smaller things you might not even be aware of (like buying an ISBN number).
The other big thing with self-publishing vs. publishing is that—unless someone knocks on your door and offers you a publishing deal (which is most likely a scam)—you’re going to need to do some work to get your writing in front of a publisher in the first place. This likely means getting someone to represent you.
Rejection
Another big factor with writing is the experience of rejection.
Rejection is pretty much built into the experience of writing. You will face rejection as a writer. To write is to be rejected (eventually, if not at first).
Going the Publisher route means facing that rejection early, you’ll be rejected as you try to find someone to represent you as a literary agent. And then when you have that literary agent, you’ll be rejected multiple times as they try to talk to a publisher. And then when you have a publisher, you’ll be rejected as your drafts get submitted that aren’t quite good enough yet.
With Self-Publishing, you’ll still face that rejection, but it might be all at the end when you publish and then no one buys (or worse—they buy it but they hate it and tell the world in negative reviews).
This is where validating your ideas can come into play.
When writing my book I chose to face early rejection head-on by putting my writing in front of beta readers and posting on social media. This won’t be true for everyone, but I found I was better able to control my reaction to rejection when I went in expecting it.
Rather than hoping for people to say my writing was amazing, I was specifically searching for what I could fix.
This controlled flow of rejection helped me handle it with preparation rather than being blindsided (which can often happen with someone who self-publishes their “masterpiece” that no one else has read before publishing).
Conclusion
So which path should you take?
The world of publishing has evolved dramatically and will continue to do so, making self-publishing an option that stands toe-to-toe with the traditional publishing route in many ways.
The decision really comes down to your personal strengths, goals, and willingness to take on more work yourself. Self-publishing may also require having some money up-front to be able to pay for editing, design, etc.
Neither path is better than the other, but one may be a much more viable option for you and your situation. I found success through self-publishing that worked really well for me, and Meredith had great success with the traditional publisher route. It’s all down to finding the best path for you and knowing yourself and how you will work best.
Notes from Meredith
ADHDers often stay stuck in the decision phase due to an unclear vision of the choices we are considering. I am no exception to this. When I was deciding whether to pursue traditional or self-publishing, I struggled with committing to an option because I really didn’t have a clear understanding of how the publishing world worked.
I hope this newsletter can be the type of resource I struggled to find when I first committed to writing my book. I really appreciate Jesse’s take on self-publishing here and hope it helps you feel a little closer to choosing your route, if publishing a book is on your goal list. I’ll layer on more information about traditional publishing in our next post and share more on why it worked best for me. Have you published a book? Share in the comments which path you choose and tell us what the biggest challenge was that you faced.
The idea for my series was too genre-bending to go the traditional route, so the choice to self-publish was easy.
Another person can't see your completed vision until after it's done. So, the unconventional path is where indies pioneer new ground.
I’ve had books published by Harper Collins, but the rejection is still there when I decided to write books outside of my expected ‘silo’. I’m now publishing my novel weekly on Substack. For me it’s a way to create some much needed pressure to keep going (I have a good third of the novel still to write), but I am not pushing it. My main goal is to finish it, and then see what life it wants to take. That easing of pressure is crucial for me or I risk staying in the dead zone of overwhelm procrastination where the story lingered for 4 years. I love the flexibility that we have now.