Who self publishes their work? Is it authors who have been rejected by the traditional publishers, but are certain their books are good enough or would appeal to people? Is it hybrid authors who are traditionally published, but want to publish either their backlist or something completely different?  Is it control freaks who need to have final say in every aspect of their work?

I think many self-publishers fall into at least one of these categories.

But self-publishing isn’t right for everyone.

The thing is, I’m such a strong advocate of self-publishing, I haven’t—make that hadn’t— stopped to take a look at the other side—those for whom self-publishing is not a good fit.

So I thought I’d look at why  someone wouldn’t want to self-publish.

 Well, for starters, it takes a great deal of work to publish your own work:

You need write your book
See that it’s properly edited
Have it formatted for publication
Design the cover, or at least have an idea of what you want the cover to look like so that you can have someone else design it for you
Write your book description
Upload the book to all the e-retailers where you want to sell the book (after deciding whether or not Kindle Select is for you or not)

Yes, a lot of this work can be handed off to people who specialize in these things, but then you have to lay out a good deal of money to get it done—probably on the order of $500+ , depending on how fancy you get and how much you have others do for you. That’s a nice chunk of change on a book you don’t know will sell, or how well it will sell. In other words, you may never see that money ever again.

Once the book is written and published, you then have to market it. That means finding people to read and review your book, finding where to advertise it (more money being spent here), and goodness knows how many hours on social media (although traditionally published authors need to do that too). Some authors get very creative with their marketing, hosting giveaways, Facebook parties and such. If you’re a creative marketer, it will help a lot. If you’re not…

After you manage to get through all of this, there’s still no guarantee that you book will sell. You might see a nice jump at first (the results of all of your marketing and social media efforts), but then it might languish. Sales could drop and, aside from pouring more money in to advertising, there isn’t much you can do.   You just have to be patient. Write your next book, and the next.

This is the hardest part of self-publishing. This is where you really see what you’re made of. Whether you’ve got the grit to stick it out. It is at this point that a lot of people give up and turn back to traditional publishing.

To be traditionally published all you need to do is:

Write your book and make sure there aren’t too many typos or grammatical mistakes (a quick proofread by someone who knows what they’re doing would be a good idea).
Find an agent to represent your work
Wait while they try to sell it to any number of editors at various publishing houses.
Work with your agent to make sure that you have a fair contract once it’s sold (this is one where your rights will be reverted back to you within your lifetime and you receive a decent percentage of the royalties)

You’ll still, most likely, need to do most of your own marketing, though.  But the publisher will handle all of the details of publishing the book. However, they still can’t guarantee that it will sell and if you’re a new author you’ll still need to work just as hard at the social media while writing your next book.

Once book #2 is written, of course, you’ll have to go through the whole submission process again, unless your first publisher chooses to take advantage of the option clause of your contract (the one that says that you can’t submit your next book to any other publisher until they have sat on it for three months deciding whether it’s worth their while to publish it). If they decide not to publish it, then you start from scratch having your agent submit it everywhere and receiving all those nasty rejection letters again, only this time the editors at other houses will look to see how your first book is selling. If it’s not doing so well, no matter how much they love your writing, their editorial board may not feel that your book is worth the risk.

I’m sorry, who was it who said being an author was easy? Oh, right. No one!

The question is, which difficult road will you choose?

Self-publish and do all the work yourself where you are in control, but have to invest your own money and time, or try the traditional route where others make most of the decisions for you?

With traditional publishing, if you get picked up by a major house, you do have the caché of the name behind you, which might help sell more books—at least initially (but, honestly, if you ask any random reader who published the book they’re reading right now, odds are they can’t tell you and don’t care if it’s traditionally published or self-published, they only care that it’s well written). With self-publishing you get to keep the control and not worry about whether your next book will be published or not.

Which is the right way for you? Only you and your tenacity will be able to tell. Either way, it’s going to be a long, difficult road. 

Be strong and know that in the end, it’s all about the reader—providing  them with the best story, the best entertainment, and perhaps even a subtle message. The message in my books and to you, here, is the same—no matter what route you travel to publication, everyone can have their happily ever after.