I am a self-published author, and I am curious how many other authors around here are going that route. As far as I can see, self-publishing has the following pros and cons:

Pros

  • You get a much higher percentage from each sale
  • You won’t have to deal with rejection letters from publishers - only you decide if your work gets published
  • You usually retain all rights of your work, and don’t need to agree to any exclusive contract
  • Only you decide whether your book goes “out of print”

Cons*

  • You have more up-front costs for illustrations, layout, editing and copywriting, etc.
  • Your bookkeeping will get much more complicated as well
  • You won’t sell as many books in total as with a traditional publisher
  • You need to work harder to get valuable feedback, and won’t be partnered with an experienced editor who will find major flaws in your work
  • If you go the Print On Demand route, printing costs per unit will be much higher
  • If you order entire print runs, you will have huge up-front costs and will have to deal with all the logistics that come with storage, shipping, and so on
  • You have to do all your marketing yourself
  • You will have a much harder time getting your books into physical bookstores

For me, the Pros outweighted the Cons. How about you?

  • kindnesskills@literature.cafeEnglish
    3·
    6 days ago

    Having read only a small selection of self-published books (note: I don’t consider fan-fic to this category, and will only count authors that have never had a publisher here - not well-eatablished authors that do it later in their career): They all would very much have benefited from an editor.

    I suppose using friends or family for proof-reading can work, but those people need to be skilled enough and comfortable enough to give both honest and helpful feedback. The ones I’ve read could have been good to really good, if someone had checked stuff like continuity, redundancy, flow, and even grammar to clarify some points.

    As it stands I don’t think I’ve read such a self-published book that didn’t feel unfinished/unpolished.

    At least regarding modern literature - I have no idea about the publishing history of old classics.

    Worth noting that I speak only as an avid reader, and enthusiastic critic, of other peoples work, and have no leg to stand on in between my inexperience with the publishing world and my hypocrisy of critiquing what I could not do better myself.

    • Jürgen Hubert@literature.cafeOPEnglish
      1·
      6 days ago

      Yeah, getting useful feedback is a major challenge for self-published authors. And I’d argue that “friends and family” are probably the worst people to give you feedback on your manuscript. Either they won’t give you honest feedback because they might hurt your feelings. Or they will give you honest feedback, which might result in hurt feelings on your part. It’s best to find someone who has enough detachment from you to proofread your work.

      Personally, I try to get around this by inviting both alpha readers (for the first draft) and beta readers (for the nearly finished work) to give feedback for my manuscript. This seems to work fairly well, so far.