To self-publish or not to self-publish - Part II

I peppered my last post with words of warning that self-publishing wasn’t as rosy as I was making it seem. This is my rebuttal, what part of my brain says when I swing back from my self-publishing high.

This is…

Part II - Not to self-publish 

i.e. publish traditionally. By this I mean the normal route of:

•         finding an agent
•         the agent finding you a publisher (big or small)
•         you getting an advance
•          the publisher producing your book and selling it (hopefully)

1/ You get a stamp of quality

As much as I hate it, there is still some stigma associated with self-publishing. And even though the barriers are coming down, it’s still hugely important for many people to get that recognition. Agents are sometimes called ‘gatekeepers’, because they stop all the crap from getting to the publishers. They’re the ones who have to sort the gems from the slushpile they receive.

Nobody stops anyone from publishing crap on Amazon.

Now you may say that many crap books are published by traditional publishers, but what you mean really is that many books you think are crap are published by traditional publishers. Other people like the very same books you think are a total disgrace. But you won’t find books that have loads of typos, are ridden with grammatical mistakes or just make no sense.

Now in all honesty, I doubt those terrible Amazon books made their author very successful or have swamped the market. They’re part of the data, sure, but they’re just there, doing not very much. (There must be some very interesting articles on this data somewhere – if you know any, do send them my way!)

Yet people still attribute this enormous importance to ‘being published’. To having someone else say: ‘Hey, this is good. We should sell it.’ Which brings me to point 2.

2/ It takes a hell of a lot of guts to promote a self-published book

You have to be pretty damn confident to go around and ask people to give you money and invest their time in something that no one but you (and your mum, or so I hear) think is brilliant. Relentlessly ask people for money and time. As part of the jobs you take on, you have to be the main marketing guy in your one-person company. Now of course you care passionately about your book, which makes you well qualified to rave about it, but it’s your baby. You’re too close to it. You might also be incredibly a) sensitive, b) doubt-ridden, c) overprotective or d) all of the above (D, please). You have to stomach bad reviews all on your own, and have nothing but your own self-belief to keep you going. That’s haaaard.

3/ A one-person company can be lonely

I mentioned in a previous post I’d fallen in love. It wasn’t so much love as that feeling you get when you’re single and you see a loved-up couple. You might well be very happily single, dancing and singing à la Natasha Bedingfield and Beyonce, (*all the single ladies, all the single ladies, lalala*), but then you see that couple touching and kissing and looking so lovely together you get that warm fuzzy feeling and you think, ‘Gosh, I wish I had that.’ It’s not so much envy as hope. You see all that love and you think, ‘That could be me.' That's why we watch romcoms, right?

Right, so this is what happened to me with an agent. Not as romantic, I know. But the way she talked about her author was so passionate (yes, I know it’s her job!) it made me want someone to talk about my book like that. Someone who would be on my side and love it and fight for it with me.

I know there are many indie author networks and circles. But being part of the traditional publishing process, you’re also part of a team, and that team is working for your book because they believe in it. Not because you’re paying them. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

4/ You get an advance

Now of course you’re not in writing for the money, otherwise you’d be an investment banker (or insert other stereotypically well-paid job). But it’s like with my other actual job (the one with the little people): you don’t do it for the money, but you still need the paycheck at the end of the month to pay the bills. If nothing else, getting an advance might mean this: giving up the day job for a few months to write book 2 and do some promo. And this little bit of time might make all the difference to your career as an author.

5/ It takes a lot of time to self-publish

(Have you noticed how nicely my paragraphs flow into each other? I hope you’re impressed.)

I mentioned earlier that as a self-published author you take on all the jobs of a normal publisher. Now even if you outsource some of it, it’s still a huge responsibility. It means learning a huge range of skills and doing a lot of reading. It means coordinating and proofing a lot of work. It takes time.

Time you’re not spending writing your next book.

6/ Self-publishing costs money

As indie author, you are your own investor. You can do a kickstarter (or similar) to raise some money, but unless you already have a following, you’re looking at your friends and family giving you a hand. If you are successful, you should be able to recuperate the costs, and hopefully even make some money (to take time off to write book 2, as with the traditional route).

But let’s look at numbers. From what I’ve seen, a book published to a professional standard will cost around £3000 (maybe more). If you get about £2 back for every book, you’d still need to sell 1,500 books just to cover your costs. For an indie author, that’s already quite a lot. So there’s also high risk that you’d lose money on the book. But at the end of the day, if you’re self-publishing, it’s because you are willing to take on that risk. So then you have to decide… Is it worth it?

As for me, well… At the moment I’m in the ‘finding an agent’ phase of my mood swings. Tomorrow, who knows?