Piper Nuelle

Self-Publishing, is it still relevant?

To answer this question we first need to look at and understand why people and authors decide to Self-Publish their books, novels and ideas in the first place.

Firstly, self-publishing was a revolutionary concept that made it so authors from any genre, niche and background could print a copy of their precious book baby, and then market it and sell it to the world in their own way. Traditional Publishing is extremely hard to get accepted into, even many of the great authors of our time struggled at first to get their books noticed and published, it was only because someone who worked in the ‘Traditional Publishing’ world decided to take a chance… But what about all the books and authors that don’t get given a chance? I have read some brilliant Self Published books over the years and some bad ones too, but that also goes for the Traditionally Published ones as well. In fact I’ve probably read more bad ‘Traditional’ ones than ‘self published’ ones… And that’s not to say that people that go the traditional route are bad, oh no. It’s just those books are more readily available to purchase, they appear in bookstores, in supermarkets, online etc… So I have more chance of coming across a bad traditional then a bad self published. But what if the tables could turn, what if in this new day and age Self Published books could become bigger, better, easier to sell and buy… Oh that would be the dream.

But why do people self publish?

Well there are certainly many reasons why an author may decide to go the self published route;

• Maybe they tried Traditional and got rejected too much and decided to just give it a try, there is only so much rejection people can take and now with the ‘world wide web’ and many people becoming self employed entrepreneurs, it’s easier than ever to write a book and sell it.
• Some authors are able to churn out a lot of books, especially if they have a lot of story ideas. It can take years of hard work to get a traditional publisher to take one book let alone the ten other ideas you have lurking around. Self published means you can publish them all!!! As and when you like.
• Total control! When you go traditional many authors lose a lot of the creative control over their works, works that they have spent many days, months, weeks, years, blood, sweat and tears working on… And then someone else tears it apart, puts it back together and changes things… Then the story has changed, it’s not how you envisioned it, it becomes someone else’s vision. But what’s to say their vision is right? When you self publish you have total control over it all, the story, the editing, the cover design, the inner design, the marketing, buying the ISBN’s… Everything!!!
• Higher Royalties. This may sound awesome right, you want the dosh, the dough, the higher royalties. And with self publishing you can… to a certain degree. I’m not gonna lie, self publishing and making money is hard work, but then so is any business that you own yourself. You can set the price of your book to what you like, if you have full creative control and you’ve paid a cover designer and editor etc beforehand, then what ever you make from book sales is then yours. Going traditional to some sounds good too, you can get an advance if your book is chosen, but… Publishing houses and agents take their cut, your books are sold to a bookstore for a wholesale price, they take their cut, selling platforms take theirs… In total an author may only make 10% give or take of the sales, and that if it surpasses the advance you received in the beginning. Say a publishing house grants you a £20,000 advance for your book, you will need your book sales to surpass the £20,000 threshold for it be deemed to be making more money and then you may earn more royalties at a percentage for each. But… You do need to remember that traditional houses have contacts at bookstores, and know how to sell books… There is always a risk with self publishing that although all the royalties may be yours, you may not sell very many to make much money. But that’s where marketing comes into play and yes, can cost you money too, but sometimes to make money you need to spend money. But it all depends on your budget, your determination and luck, and potentially other reasons as to why you wanted to self publish in the first instance.
• It can be as expensive or as cheap as you want. Some people have money to throw at their book babies, some people don’t. But platforms like Amazon’s KDP are usually free to use to a certain extent and they take a cut during the process, plus they use a print on demand service, so your book only gets printed every time someone orders one, which means you don’t have the huge print costs, storage costs and then trying to flog them all costs. As well as this, you can create a book so cheaply, you can make covers cheaply, you can do all the editing and proof reading yourself to save on costs too. Which if you are low income or have no money to spare can be helpful… But you do have to weigh in other factors such as; if its all done on the cheap will the book look cheap? Will it look appealing to potential buyers? Will there be mistakes? Will it look professional enough? These are all things someone planning on self publishing will have to think about.
• Speed. Like I mentioned earlier, some authors have many book and story ideas, and going Traditional might take too long and they might not even publish every book. Self Publishing means you can speed the process up. You could write a book and edit and self publish every six months if you have the time and dedication to do so.
• To become an expert in a field or niche. Some authors write books or manuals for certain niches or genres. It may be that they have a business, and a book is a tag along to the business, a normal traditional publisher may not take a chance on a book that is so niche in topic and may only sell to certain people. But, with self publishing you can reach your target audience and sell your book to those that need and or want it. Maybe you are an expert in a certain topic or field of work and a small accompanying book may appeal to others who wish to learn more in that chosen field. Therefore you can become an expert or be the expert people go to.
• As a full time job. Some authors want to take their writing very seriously, its all they have ever wanted! But maybe the world hasn’t given them any chances to do this, or life took them in a different direction so they couldn’t acquire the correct credentials, skills, certificates or experience. So they self publish their books and use it and see it as their full time job.
• As a hobby. Vice versa to the previous one. Maybe they have a full time job that they like or need to pay the bills, but they enjoy writing on the side but can’t dedicate a lot of time to meeting writing deadlines that traditional publishing might want. So they take their time writing their book and once it’s done they self publish it, and then take their time writing the next one.
• To see their name in print. Some people simply self publish so they can see their name in print and to cross it off their bucket list, just to say they have done it. Some authors may only have enough in them for one book, and once they have done it they don’t see the thrill of it anymore. Self publishing can get it out of their system so they know they can do it and have done it.

As you can see there are many reasons as to why someone might choose to self publish their book over Traditional publishing. And does this help us to answer the question of – Is Self Publishing still relevant?

From looking at the reasons above I would have to conclude that ‘YES’, Self Publishing is still very much relevant, and maybe in these modern times where jobs are becoming more scarce, people such as agents and publishing houses are cutting back to cut costs so they are not taking as many authors on, or are maybe not willing to take risks on new, unknown authors that it has maybe become more relevant with the times. And there has also, over the years been a huge boost in celebrities writing or coming out with books and not just auto-biographies or biographies, but novels! Because they already have an audience to sell to, publishing houses will choose them over an unknown author as it’s easy money. So once again becoming an author traditionally has become harder and harder for the normal creative human. Therefore, Self Publishing is key to many to achieve their dreams and write and publish a book.

Many may argue pro’s and cons for Self Publishing and many argue pro’s and cons for Traditional… But I’m sure I can cover those in another blog post if you think it may be helpful.

Hope you found this blog post helpful and if you have anything you would like to add let me know… I can always do an updated version at a later date if I have missed anything.

Take care xo Piper xo