For the record, I have nothing against self-publishing, at least in principle.
On the other hand, I do have a problem with oh-so-many self-published books. Going by the ones I’ve sampled myself, most of them seem to be pretty awful.
I self-published my first book (don’t bother looking for it—I took it down a while back, and by now it’s been removed from most, if not all, of the online stores that listed it).
That book had many problems; it was self-edited, I did the artwork myself, and I tried to market it myself. But I didn’t have to worry about it being rejected by an agent or a publisher, and it didn’t cost me anything.
And those last points, really, are probably what makes self-publishing such an attractive proposition for many people.
The trouble is, though, that the book’s problems stemmed from the fact that it didn’t cost me anything. Let me explain.
First, doing my own marketing. This was definitely a mistake. I tried it, and I learned pretty quickly that I’m awful at it. (And by the way, marketing includes things like, having cover artwork that gets people interested, and, writing a good back-cover blurb, and even, choosing a good title.) Good marketing takes a lot more than posting a link to the book’s Amazon page on Twitter a dozen times a day.
Second, doing my own artwork. My wife says I can draw, and maybe I can, a bit, but my efforts are nowhere near good enough to make a professional-looking book cover.
Third—and this is probably the most important point by far: self-editing. All I can say is, don’t self-edit. Even professional editors, when writing their own work, engage another editor for that. The problem with editing your own work is that you’re too close to it. For most people, being objective and critical of your own work is nigh-on impossible.
When you try to do all these things yourself, you run the risk of producing what I did: a badly-edited book that didn’t sell.
So my advice to you, if you’re thinking about self-publishing, is this. One, pay for a professional editor. Two, pay for some good cover artwork. Three, do a better job of marketing than I did (how you do that is a mystery to me, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it means paying out for advertising and so on).
But hang on . . .
You’ve now put yourself in the position that people were in, in the days before publishing became an industry. You’re paying out the cash up-front for editing, proofreading, formatting, printing and distribution (if you’re going for print, that is), advertising and marketing, and who knows what else. And if your book doesn’t sell, you’re out of pocket. In other words, you’re taking a huge gamble.
And that is exactly what publishing houses do; they’re betting that the books they publish will sell well enough to cover all those costs, and start making a profit.
Congratulations. You’ve just put yourself into the publisher’s shoes. You’ve turned yourself into a single-seater publishing house.
If you have that kind of faith in your book, then go for it; I wish you the best of luck. At least you’ll get 100% of the cover price back in your pocket for every sale, right? (Actually, you probably won’t; when you self-publish, whichever service you use will take their cut, and the best deal I know of will give you 65%. That means the service is taking 35% of every sale—and they don’t provide editing, or artwork, or marketing, for that slice of your pie.)
So, before I end this, here’s one parting thought: If you’re going to pay out for all that, then why not consider taking your book to a publisher in the first place?
Author Pete Ford’s Steampunk adventure Mr. Gunn and Dr. Bohemia is slated for release in November of 2013.
