The importance of direction in independent publishing

What do you want your book to be? It’s an important question to ask yourself when you’re getting involved in independent publishing, not least because you’ll probably be relying on no one but yourself to make a success of your publishing venture.

It’s also important because independent publishing encompasses more aspects than just ‘being a writer’. Naturally, being a writer is the most important aspect – without writing, you wouldn’t have a book to publish in the first place, or any more books in the future to publish after your first.

However, vision and direction are important too. From the cover design of your book to how you plan to market it, some sort of vision is crucial. This can be a really fun aspect of independent publishing. You essentially get to be your own creative director, which is great not only for your book, but also for developing skills that could help you in other areas of your life too.

For instance, it helps to develop your project management skills, and introduces you to new areas. After all, before publishing, I’d wager that very few of us were experienced at everything to do with writing, designing, marketing, publishing, formatting, editing, proofreading, engagement and so on. Self-publishing incorporates a wide range of skills, all of which can be learned along the way if necessary, but without that initial vision or ideas for direction, the process will be much more of a challenge.

We’ve looked at the issue of control on this blog before: independent publishing is a great way for authors to get as much control as possible over their work. So get thinking about that vision and the direction you want your work to go in – it might start as an abstract or half-formed idea, but with time, it should certainly help you along the way.