Saturday, March 20, 2010

Why self publish?

You may be wondering why I've chosen to self publish my book. I know I am.

If I go with an established publishing company I would have the benefit of their distribution network, their art department, their editors, their experience and their money. Why wouldn't I send my book off to have them at least consider it before I fund and try piecemeal things together myself?

Well I could waffle on about having creative control or other such nonsense. But the truth is two-fold.

Firstly, I don't like rejection, and everything I've read on the net about publishing a book says there is a lot of it to share around. I'm more than happy for someone to read my work and tell me a chapter sucks or a character needs work. That's constructive. But a flat, soulless, reasonless rejection letter doesn't interest me. I know, I've got four from publishers already for some short stories of mine.

Secondly, I'm impatient, and all that rejection takes time. If I can only send my work to one publisher at a time (which is what they want) and it can take six months for them to reject it, I could be five years down the road with only a handful of publishers having their shot at ripping out my heart and stomping on it.

And to make up for all this lack of distribution channels and experience, I will receive higher royalties on the books I sell. If I sell for US$14.95 on Amazon I can expect US$5.08 a book. That's head, shoulders and armpits above the usual royalty an author can expect, which would be a piddly $.74c for the same priced book (according to calculations I've seen on the net). So straight away I only have to sell 1/6th the number of books (Without experience. Without a marketing department. Without sales staff). So things are really looking up.

No, I'll put my money where my mouth is and go it alone.

You see, I have a plan. Mainly it involves hoping like hell I sell enough books to strangers to cover costs, but there you go.

More on that soon.

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