So, here's why I don't (currently) self-publish...

For the past few years, I (along with everyone else on the planet) have been hearing a lot about self-publishing. And I have to admit, I’ve considered the possibility, albeit briefly. Ultimately, I decided not to self-publish, at least at this time. Here’s why, in list format.

But first, the facts…

Fact: Some people are making a lot of money in self-publishing.

More relevant fact: Most are not. In fact, the vast majority of “most” are not. The few you’ve heard about, you’ve heard about because they’re the exceptions, not the rule.

So, considering the very slim chance that I would fall into that "exceptional" category, right now, the risk doesn’t seem worth losing what I gain from traditional publishing.

Here’s another list, this time of things that a self-published author has to do for him/herself:
Cover art – I am not an artist. Seriously. I’ve never had a class, mostly because I’m no good at art. At all. Right now, my publisher designs my covers, and even when I occasionally don’t love one, that cover I don’t love is still infinitely better than anything I could design for myself.Marketing – I don’t know how to market. Marketing isn’t the same as promotion. (If you’re not sure of the difference, look it up.) Right now, I don’t do any of my own marketing. I wouldn’t even know where to begin. My publisher does that for me.Promotion – I do quite a bit of this myself, because I have to. Very, very few authors get book tours, spots on national television, or in-theater advertisement. I’ve never had any of that. But every single magazine/newspaper ad I’ve ever had, my publisher is responsible for, and even the smallest of those reaches thousands more people than I could ever reach online myself. Sales – “Sales” doesn’t mean selling to individual customers. It means selling to book stores and vendors. My publisher has a huge team of people who sell my books to B&N, BAM, airport book stores, Wal-mart, Target, the occasional grocery story and drug store chain, and dozens of foreign markets. I could never do that on my own. There’s about a 0% chance of me getting my books into Wal-mart without a sales team. My chance of getting them into B&N isn’t much better. And if the readers can’t find the books, the readers can’t buy the books.
But here are the most important reasons I currently have no intention of self-publishing:

Prey and If I Die.

To date, these are the books I get the most positive feedback on (followed closely by Alpha), and neither of them would be anything like versions currently on the shelf, if not for my editor.

[Fear not. There are no spoilers below.]

The first version of Prey I turned in had an entirely different plot than what actually made it into the book. During the revisions, thanks to my editor’s input, I gutted the main plot and created a new one, keeping only the subplots and emotional high points. It was a massive, frustrating revision. But it worked.

However, if I’d been self-publishing Prey, it would have gone out in its original form, and people would have hated it, and many of them would have stopped reading my work.

(Before you say that could never happen, trust me, it can, and it has. Every single week, I come across a comment in a Soul Screamers review from someone who's surprised by a good review, because the commenter liked MSTTake, but didn’t like MSTSave, and so stopped reading the series. Every. Single. Week. And none of them say that MSTSave was a bad book. They just don’t think it was a great book. So imagine how many readers I would have lost by putting out a truly bad version of Prey?)

My editor was also instrumental in the development of If I Die, but this time her input came during the planning stage, which saved me a lot of time and frustration. Originally, I planned for Kaylee to remain ignorant of her own rapidly approaching death date until the end of the book, where she would discover that the people who loved her had been scrambling behind the scenes to save her life, while she was fighting the evil incubus.

It was my editor’s idea to let Kaylee know up front that she was scheduled to die, so readers could experience Kaylee’s shock and fear along with her throughout the story. And that one suggestion changed the entire book. Seriously, the whole thing. If I Die would have been a very different (and inferior) book if I’d self-published it with no editorial input.

So, ultimately, it all comes down to quality and my inability to do my best work without a team of professionals/experts behind me.

Of course, I reserve the right to change my mind later, but I don’t see that happening any time soon. Because I’m not an editor, publicist, or member of a sales or marketing team.

I'm a writer.