Is Self-Publishing Just a Plan B Option?
Should you go for a traditional publishing house or self-publish?
You are left to do it all yourself or to pay others for issues you cannot handle.
That means you must write the book, edit it, proofread it, take care of cover and description.
You need to market your book, but this is—in most cases—no different from traditional publishing.
If a book does not sell, you are free to change its title, its cover, or its description.
Yes, some do. And that used to be true when there was only two options:
you will make up to 70% of the book’s gross price, and around 60% of a paperback’s price after print expenses.
If we start with the advantages, then the biggest is the prestige you get from being able to tell people that your book is published by so-and-so.
A traditional publisher will typically print between 100 and several thousand copies of a book. That means expenses that will only be covered when the book sells.
If a publishing house chooses to take the economic risk of publishing your book, it means it is good. More than good, it is great.
l you have to do is write the book, edit it according to in-house editors, and correct your spelling and grammatical errors, again following guidelines from an in-house proofreader.
You do not have to worry about book cover, book description, sometimes not even the title. All those are issues that your publishing house takes care of.
Most publishing houses have a distribution system, which is a significant advantage for you. That means they take care of contacting bookstores and delivering your book to them. On the other hand, a bookstore is free to order, say, ten copies and return them all ten, because they did not sell out in a week. Space in a bookstore is not free.
Most publishing houses will buy the rights to your book and keep it forever. That means that you are not free to publish it yourself under another title, even if the publishing house has stopped selling it.