Being smart about self-publishing costs

Writers don’t have an endless supply of money. There aren’t many businesses that do. But I saw this article on the Huffington Post, and it seems like everyone and their grandmother is coming out to say how awesome traditional publishing really is. But they always seem to do it in a way that disparages self-publishing, and I think that is what makes me angry inside. Because everyone is always “it has to be MY way, because YOUR way is wrong!” But running a business is your personal choice, and how you run your business is… well, your business.

So i’m going to take that articles points one at a time, because I feel the need to respond.

1. Your book will reflect your investment.

I don’t disagree with this point. But the author’s article is wrong on basic facts in this section and obviously didn’t do her research for this article. It makes it hard to take her seriously. For one, there are still FIVE major publishers: Simon & Schuster, Harper Collins, Penguin Random House, Macmillan, and Hachette.

Publishing can be expensive, but a little creativity (which writers have in spades) can take your costs down. It doesn’t have to cost $5000. For my most recent book, I bartered to take the costs down. I’m a rich person, and I never have a lot of capital sitting around. So to get my book edited twice, I bartered off my graphic design skills. Two Facebook headers, and two book covers later, I had my book edited. I do my own covers, and formatting is an easy skill to learn. I use Jutoh, which compiles and creates several eBook formats. The program cost me $40, which I have more than earned out over the two books I’ve published since, and the multitude of new versions I’ve made and updated.

2. People who don’t know and love you will need to buy your book. 

Uh, duh. I’m sorry, really? This is a point? I think this woman is still thinking of vanity publishing when it comes to self-publishing, where the author spends thousands to put their book in print and three hundred copies sit in their garage. Then came the internet and you know, technology.

“Self-publishing is great for authors with an existing fan base that is very large. President Obama (then Senator Obama) admitted that until his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, his 1995 self-published memoir, Dreams from My Father, remained stacked up in his basement…”

Obviously, I cannot agree with this. With the exception of a single short story in an anthology, I’ve only self-published and while I’m not pulling in six figures, I’m solidly mid-list. I really think this woman is mixing up self-publishing with vanity publishing, because I can guarantee I don’t have a stack of books in my garage or basement (if I had a basement.) I know several debut authors that did well self-publishing, some are pulling in seven figures a year, some are pulling in a decent five figures.

3. Book promotion is not for the fainthearted.

Yeah, I’d agree with this. It’s not an easy thing to master. Some people go to school for YEARS to get their Bachelors or their MBA and then they’re not even experts in marketing. But again, with this article, the author STILL gets facts wrong.

Like this:

Providing advanced copies to booksellers can be problematic for self-published titles, especially with publishers like Createspace that do not offer pre-distribution copies.

Uh, you can do that. All you have to do is order proof copies before the book is live. OR… You can turn off the sales channels and order the copies before making the book live on the retailer sites. I feel like she doesn’t understand the level of control that people can have with self-publishing, if they want.

4. Getting a self-published book on a library or bookstore shelf or featured e-book is as easy as raising one eyebrow.

Wait… what?

The majority of bookstores will not stock self-published books.

Well, the majority of bookstores don’t stock a lot of traditionally published books either.  This is something the Big Five brought on by doubling the number of titles they put out. If you publish 40,000 titles and bookstores only have room for 20,000 titles on their shelves? You better believe that some books are going to be lost in the mix.

Print on Demand book publishers do not offer the same deep discount on volume sales as traditional publishers; nor do they allow books to be returned.

This isn’t true at all. All my books are marked returnable and have a 55% discount, which is attractive and less risky for bookstores. In fact, since I changed from a short discount to the 55%, I’m selling more print units. While this is something that I’d not really focused on, since the majority of my business is digital, it’s a healthy secondary income source.

5. Writing is a personal journey but publishing is not.

For the most part, I do agree with this section of the article. There were a couple things that bugged me about it though.

Everything — and I do mean everything — about the book needs to be vetted with the target audience. This kind of data is what traditional publishers have at their fingertips.

Uh, maybe they have this data, but I’m not sure they’re using it. CJ Lyons mentioned on a podcast last year that she took the data she’d gathered on her self-publishing books to her publisher, and they had no idea. They didn’t have that data. But that makes sense for them, because they’re not marketing directly to consumers. They’re marketing to the distributors, and the bookstores, which is a different market, for sure.

So basically, this article is telling people that selling books is more than marketing to friends and family. Great. I knew that already.

Maybe it’s because of the high count of inaccuracies, or the lack of fact checking, but I had a hard time taking this article seriously, but it was interesting, or I wouldn’t have taken the time to write this post.

Now, I’m not anti-traditional. I think everyone needs to find their own path. And for some, that’s getting a publisher to pick up the work. But there are others, like me, that prefer all the control we get from self-publishing. While it is a business decision, it’s also a personal one. What does your situation dictate? As always, do your research, especially when you decide to write for the HuffPo.

What did you guys think?