In this article, I set out my personal thoughts, reflections, and experiences about self-publishing that might help you think through this subject carefully, before you take the plunge.

I have had extensive experience in self-publishing, because my first book was completely self-published. (Later on, I accumulated experience in hybrid publishing models and the traditional, mainstream publisher route.)

In hindsight, I should have first thought through the issues and considerations laid out in this article about self-publishing. If I had known back then what I know today, I would have saved myself a lot of anguish, heartache, and pain.

But my painful experiences are your gain — I hope this article that sets out my thoughts, reflections, and pointers will help you in self-publishing.

If you are reading this article in the first place, I am going to assume that you are considering taking the self-publication route instead of crafting a successful book proposal and going down a more mainstream publishing route. I hasten to add that self-publishing has become a lot more recognised and accepted these days.

What should you consider before self-publishing?

Cover design. Will you be designing the cover yourself or hiring someone to design the cover? If you are designing the cover yourself, what is your theme and overarching design? What is the main visual or image going to be? Is the cover appealing and attractive? If you are hiring someone, what is their skill level and experience? How many rounds of input can you give to refine the cover design? How much does the designer cost and what is your budget?

Layout and typesetting. A book is not just a manuscript cobbled together. There are many aspects in layout and typesetting to consider, such as (1) fixing widows and orphans; (2) general typesetting considerations; and (3) graphics, pictures, and other visual elements, such as motifs at the start of each chapter. When you hire someone to deal with layout and typesetting, you might want to consider their experience and knowledge, as well as whether they are typesetting for a physical book or an e-book. When it comes to e-books, you have to watch the various formats as well.

Editing. An editor can help you with many aspects beyond copyediting and proofreading; an editor is more than someone who just fixes typos, spelling errors, and grammatical mistakes. An editor can work with you on a style guide (or better still, if you have an existing style guide that sets out “your rules”, let your editor know!). A style guide will ensure that the book reads coherently. However, you have to be aware that even if you hire a proper editor, there will likely still be mistakes. So, ultimately the responsibility rests with you. You have to think through how many rounds of copyediting and proofreading you will need, and manage the associated timelines.

Quality of the printer. You must go to an experienced, quality, skilled printer to produce your book. Never go with your “mum’s friend’s company” (sorry, Mum). If you skimp on cost, the book might not turn out so well, and you could be saddled with unsellable, cheap stock. Alternatively, you might disappoint your fans and supporters, which is arguably worse than not selling well. (Trust me, I speak from personal and bitter experience.)

Nowadays, there are many vanity presses or print-on-demand companies, often with comprehensive editorial, design, and typesetting services that cover the necessary cover design, layout, and editing too. Therefore, finding one that works well for you should not be too difficult. You can also work with an actual mainstream publisher that does design and printing work, and pay them to print your book.

Paper work. With respect to printing, you also have to consider what I would call “paper work”. You have to decide on the type, size, and weight of the paper. I learnt terms like “matt coated paper” and “gsm” (grammes per square metre). On the topic of “gsm”, the lower the number, the lighter the paper.

Personally, I regretted printing my first book in 130 gsm matte art paper with perfect binding, with a 300 gsm cover. It made a relatively short book quite heavy.

Then again, making this sort of rookie mistake made me really appreciate the kind, forgiving, and sweet people who supported my first self-published book (they are true heroes).

You also have to decide the trim size (the height and width of the pages of a book), such as 5″ x 8″ for trade paperbacks or 6″ x 9″ for hardcovers. Today, I am happy to say that I am much better at “paper work”, and this is definitely an area to watch out for in self-publishing. I made the mistakes so you do not have to do so.

Murphy’s Law is real: everything that can go wrong will go wrong. Do factor in extra buffer time and extra budget into your plans, because you can count on Murphy being right. Misprints happen; mistakes can be made; timelines can slide.

Personally, I have found that the best way to avoid unnecessary stress is to buffer one or two weeks extra for each process or step. Did the editor say she would take four weeks? Factor in a week or two more. Did the printer say that printing would take two weeks? Factor in a week more. Did the designer say she would get back with the updated design in a week? Factor in a week more.

If people do deliver on time, or, better still, ahead of time, great! There’s no real loss with a slightly generous timeline. But if disaster strikes, you will have greater peace of mind. Don’t plan on things going exactly to plan.

On a side note, when I self-published my first book back in 2017, there was no COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, when my book My Father’s Kampung was published with World Scientific, it came out slightly delayed during the global pandemic. My personal storage costs also suddenly increased because I had to find extra storage space to place the books. Luckily, I had catered for buffer in timelines and budget. Remember that Murphy’s Law is real.

Marketing and press. When you choose the path of self-publishing, you are basically choosing to be responsible for everything. And that includes marketing, publicity, promotion, and press. You should develop a detailed marketing plan and prepare to pitch your work to the press. Planning this step requires deep expertise in marketing, public relations, and mass communications. You will need to consider both social media and mainstream media options and how best to get your message across.

From personal experience, I’ve been on radio (surprising as it may be, both Chinese and English-language stations), featured in broadsheets (both Chinese and English-language newspapers), featured on social media, and even appeared in a TV documentary on CNA.

Distribution. A mainstream publisher is able to distribute through established networks. Your book will be in all major local bookstores, and potentially overseas bookstores as well.

However, in self-publishing you have to be a lot more creative. For example, do you: (1) design a website that can sell the book; (2) organise book talk-and-sale events to reach out to your target audience; (3) approach independent bookstores; (4) tap into the power of the Internet and social media; or (5) approach book distributors to get professional help in distributing your book?

There are a range of exciting options, but the key point is that you will have to determine your own routes. You have to take personal responsibility for this. And distribution will take a lot of work and each one has its own unique pros and cons.

The economics of self-publishing. Direct sales may make creators more money, as compared to depending on royalties (e.g. a flat 10% or stepped-up royalty rates). Assuming you are popular and sell many copies, a greater share of the returns accrue directly to you without any publisher, distributor, bookstore, and book agent taking their cuts of the economic pie. As you are bearing most, if not all, of the risk, you are reaping most of the rewards, which is fair.

But typically the biggest returns are not actually from direct sales, but from complementary activities, such as (1) increased sales of your related services, products, or merchandise; (2) greater publicity and promotion to spread your message or raise brand awareness of your goods and services; (3) potentially more paid teaching and speaking opportunities; (4) more paid event appearances; and (5) increased credibility and a stronger, more positive reputation (if you have done everything right). Some may even argue that, these days, these considerations apply to all writers, self-published or not.

Pricing matters. To me personally, writing is about contributing knowledge; spreading awareness of messages that are significant to you; and self-actualisation, and monetary gain is not the main purpose.

But for other writers, I can fully understand their wish to turn a profit, or at least be fairly remunerated for their efforts. Generally, self-published books are priced lower than traditionally-published books, even though authors have more autonomy in setting their own prices. Pricing is definitely more art than science, but worth spending time thinking about. Some questions to think about include:

(1) What is your pricing goal: to profit, break even, or loss-lead (I heard that this is a popular strategy to move the first book in a series)? (2) What are your production costs? When I first started out, I operated a simple heuristic of setting price at multiple of 3 or 4 times printing cost, to balance sustainability with affordability. (3) What are comparable titles selling for? What are the sale prices of competitors in the same space (i.e. similar subject and similarly self-published)? How would your price compare to your competitors’ prices? How much is too high (or too little)? That brings me to my next point.

How do we know if a self-published book’s price is set too high? To share a quick lesson in economics, the intersection of supply and demand sets the market equilibrium price, ceteris paribus (that’s fancy economics-speak for “assuming that all other factors remain constant”).

In reality, most people simply use “cost-plus pricing” (adding a margin). If there is great demand for a book, then a high price might be justified. If the demand is not too great, then a high price cannot be supported.

Earlier, I wrote that from my personal experience, a conservative rule-of-thumb estimate of 3x or 4x the production cost has worked well for me. But I would be wary of say 5x or 6x the production costs, because the self-published book would appear too expensive.

(Incidentally, when it comes to traditional publishing, publishers have well-established, proper, and experienced methods of setting prices. I would go along with their experience, and focus my time on other writing and publication priorities. And that’s why I generally prefer to be mainstream published rather than self-published.)

Quantities. How many copies should one print? I would suggest 300 or 500 for your first print run if you are sure you can sell them. I apologise, but reality is harsh. There are literally millions of books published each and every year (both through the mainstream and self-publishing routes). The sad truth is that, in general, most books do not sell more than a few hundred copies.

However, you can raise your chances of success if you have made detailed plans on distribution and sales, and are confident of your audience. If there’s good reason why you are confident of your numbers, then naturally you can print more, if you can sell them.

I would say that 300 to 500 is a safe range because if you can sell all of them, you can easily print more. But if you printed say 1,000 books and were unable to sell them, you could potentially be sitting on a lot of stock. You might even incur additional storage costs.

Final reflections. I have to caveat that these are my own thoughts, reflections, and pointers from my years of experience, but naturally not all of them will be directly applicable or immediately relevant to you. That’s OK.

But hopefully they will serve as food for thought for you and point the way to what you might want to (or need to) know or find out more.

And from one writer to another, all the best in your self-publishing journey! Remember to try to have some fun on the road to publication.

Thank you for reading.

Cheers,
Shawn Seah

(The original story was first posted on my Medium blog on 1 July 2021. This story was updated on 13 August 2023.)