Dangers of Self-Publishing?

As many of you know, I’m a self-published author – and I feel like self-publishing often receives a bad rap, just because some people assume that if you’re self-published, you couldn’t get published by a big company or you’re not talented enough to be ‘properly published’ or something like that, which is not true at all, because in this modern day and age people are more willing to handle things on their own and less willing to spend months searching for agents and editors and representatives of publishing companies to help them ‘make it big’. While there are many published authors that are famous, there are also many that are self-published – and you probably wouldn’t even know it! In many ways, self-publishing is just like getting properly published except you have to revise and edit and handle all the money business and social media business and stuff like that, so don’t think that if you’re self-published you can’t say you’re a published author, because you totally can!

So while it may seem like self-publishing is a much better alternative – and in many ways it is – there are still dangers to it that you have to be careful about and do your research with. I’m going to talk about a few of those things with you today, from the start to the finish of the publishing process!

1. Choose your company carefully. If you’re seriously looking into the industry of self-publishing, you’ll want to make sure that you do your homework on all the different companies that offer self-publishing – because trust me, there are a lot more than just one to choose from. You’ll need to make sure that the company you select is trustworthy, reliable, up-to-date, and offers everything you’re looking for as an author.

For my book Wildflower Dreams, I used CreateSpace, which is an Amazon company so I know that it’s reliable if it’s backed by such a large brand, and it also offers publishing for indie film-makers and song artists as well, so you’re not just limited to books if you want to branch out and use the same company. It’s very user-friendly and lets you keep track of how many copies you’re selling and your royalty balance right on the homepage. It also has a great selection of articles on everything from creating content to formatting that content to marketing it, all written by other authors or self-publishing company representatives. I had heard so many people talk about great experiences with CreateSpace, so I tried it out, and I’m so happy I did!

There are tons of other company options to choose from, however – Lulu, iUniverse, OutskirtsPress, and many more. I’ve provided you with direct links to all of the companies mentioned, so you can check them out for yourself! I personally don’t have any reviews on other sites besides CreateSpace simply because I haven’t used them, but you should certainly look into it and see what people are saying.

2. Prioritize and manage your time well. A huge difference between self-publishing and actually publishing is that if you’re choosing to go solo and publish on your own, you will have to take on many responsibilities by yourself. With traditional publishing, you’ve got a whole team of people to help you out, but when you’re self-publishing you have to constantly stay up to date with it even after your book is released, because you’ve got to be the one to manage everything on your own. Putting it into words here doesn’t make it sound that overwhelming, but trust me – it is! I’m not trying to discourage any of you from publishing, but just know that you will need to do some prioritizing and make sure that you’re operating on a beneficial timetable, to say, so that everything you need to do gets done. If you aren’t managing your time well, you’ll get overwhelmed by all the stress and pressure put on you from not completing what you should!

I like to check my CreateSpace account maybe twice a day so I am completely up to date if I sell more copies over the course of the day (it might sound a bit obsessive but trust me, you’ll know the feeling once you publish) and I have a PowerPoint graph/chart to organize copies sold per month, and I update it as soon as something new happens so I can analyze the data after a few months. And of course I have to stay up to date with my social media accounts, so I attend to that too! Finding your own timetable to work on is key to not feeling stressed, and the more time that passes, the better you’ll know how to handle the responsibilities and tasks you’ll have. (You can always have a family member or friend help you out if you’re not sure you’ll be able to manage it all on your own, but it’s worth a shot, because you’ll just get better at organizing everything the more you do!)

3. Marketing……. As a writer, of course, it’s hard to become super successful, so marketing is a key way to spread the word about your book. But you could be overloading on the marketing, and not doing enough writing, and finding a balance between the two is probably the most important thing you could do once your book has been launched for the world to see.

I could be writing my new book right now, but instead I’m typing up this blog post for you. I’ve set time aside later in the day for me to do some writing on my book, so that way I can squeeze in a little time for both things over the course of the day. Authors will have long nights and early mornings, trust me, so finding a way to do both (even if it’s just for a little while) is so important.

Doing things like attending author conventions, practicing your autograph, or doing live Twitter Q&A’s on your book is great, but not necessary. A writer’s job is to write, so just trust that if you’ve put out good-quality work, people will spread the word on their own. It won’t take much from you. The news of your book will still be floating around weeks after it’s been launched. In all honesty, once you’ve released your debut book, the most important thing you should be working on is producing a second, because otherwise you’ll be a one-hit wonder and will fade away soon. Content comes first – marketing that content comes second.

I hope these tips help you, and I’ll talk to you later!