Our Self Publishing Guide–Preview!

What follows is a preview from the forthcoming Evil Toad Press Guide to Self Publishing.

Chapter Two

 

The Good News and the Bad News Are the Same News

So you’ve decided to self publish.

You know you have a quality product and you’re sick of people who don’t understand it—or you—telling you no.  You’re self-determined and dedicated to your craft and you don’t want the entirety of your career to be dependent on some tin pot god in some office somewhere agreeing that you have the right to write.  You’re ready to take matters into your own hands.

Now what?

First, a reality check.

While you can absolutely make a living as a writer, a steady income takes time to build and is never a reliable thing.  Even for the best of us.  So, in short, don’t quit your day job just yet.

And in the meantime, consider this sobering fact: most books don’t sell.  The average manuscript, queried to agents, never sells a single copy.  Because 98% of manuscripts submitted to agents are never published—and that’s a real figure.  Self published authors, of course, don’t face this hurdle; but even so the average self published book sells less than a thousand copies over the course of its published lifetime.  So while self published authors earn more than their traditionally published counterparts, very few writers are actually making an independent living solely from the proceeds of selling books.

But let’s go back a minute, to that “most books don’t sell” thing.  When we compare methods of publishing, most likely we’re comparing Stephen King to Aunt June who wrote a cookbook.  Stephen King, obviously, is outselling Aunt June.  Stephen King’s books, collectively, are outselling the Bible.  But it’s disingenuous to compare all self published works, in their varying degrees of quality, to the two percent of works that manage to get traditionally published.  And even more disingenuous to pretend that Stephen King is somehow representative of traditionally published authors.

Most authors, however they publish, do not grow up to be Stephen King.  And as Hugh Howey points out, “nobody mentions this when they deride self publishing as an option.  The false premise seems to be that you can choose to self publish, or you can choose to have your book on an endcap in every bookstore while you are sent on a 12-city tour by your publisher.  That’s not the choice.  The choice is to self publish or submit to an agent.”  You can’t choose how successful you are.  You have no control over that.  No one does.  And any agent, or publisher, who promises to give you control is lying to you.  You’re better off buying a piece of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Many self published books are in bookstores and, even so, bookstore sales are becoming less and less important to the market.  Which is unfortunate for bookstores everywhere, particularly the thousands that have closed over the last decade, but fortunate for you.  Fully half of all book sales are now online.  Through channels like Amazon and Barnes & Noble that you can access as a self published author.

In other words, when it comes the magical world of online retail, nothing separates self published authors from their traditionally published counterparts.  Not visibility, and not access to the market.  The only difference is, potentially, your ability to set a lower price point and thus introduce your work to an even larger audience.

If you choose to self publish, then, depending on whether you outsource things like interior formatting and cover design to a professional, you start selling your book within one to three months of completion.  At Evil Toad Press, depending on our client load at the moment, we have a turnaround time of anywhere between one and five weeks.  Meaning that, five weeks after you give us your manuscript, we give you a real book.

Whereas, even if you do secure an agent, that first step is by no means a guarantor of success.  Even if you do land a publishing contract.  Traditional publishing is, essentially, a trade: your publisher agrees to publish, although not necessarily to promote, your work and in exchange you give up your copyright to your own work in perpetuity.  Yes, you read that right.  Your book is no longer your own.

Now, the earliest you might see your book in bookstores is one year.  The industry average, these days, is closer to between three and five years.  All in a world where communication is instant.  At some point during those three to five years, you’ll be asked to rewrite your manuscript at least once.  Not to make it better, but to make it fit whatever your publisher is looking for at the moment.

For example, back when I was still going the traditional route with my own work, I was told that I should rewrite one book as a memoir because “memoirs were hot.”  When I objected that my work was fiction, and not a memoir at all, it was pointed out to me that most memoirs were, in fact, fiction.  Turn it into a memoir was, it turned out, a thing.

I declined.

Now the interesting thing is that, despite the doom and gloom prognostications of the publishing industry that self publishing is just a fancy word for career suicide, and the very real fact that writing isn’t a high paying gig for most people, last year only twenty two percent of Amazon bestsellers were published by the Big Five.  That means that seventy eight percent of Amazon bestsellers were published by independent authors, both those working entirely on their own and those (thirty four percent) working with boutique publishing outfits like ours.

So the good news and the bad news really are the same news: while writing is hardly a get rich quick scheme, and probably won’t pay your mortgage for some time to come, your chance of success is substantially higher if you self publish.