Self Publishing has it’s Advantages and Disadvantages
20 years ago, Independent or Self Publishing a book consisted of taking your 100 page manuscript down to the local office supply and running 100 black and white copies. Your cover options were limited. You could either use a 3 hole punch and put the sheets in a 3 ring binder, or you could splurge and have the office supply store put one of those black plastic spiral binders on the side. Either way, your “Self Published” book looked, well… self published.
Not so today. A book is a book is a book they say. The line between Self Publishing and Traditional Publishing continues to become blurred. Traditional Publishers produce bound books. Self publishers produce bound books. The “Print on Demand” process produces a bound book that cannot be distinguished from a traditional published book. Traditional publishers use Kindle to digitize and sell their books on amazon. So do self publishers.
Self Publishing has disadvantages:
You will have to do your own editing or hire an editor
You will have to design your own cover or hire someone to do it for you
You’ll have to write your own cover copy and bio
You will have to check the formatting yourself, or hire someone
Self Publishing has advantages:
If you already have your manuscript completed, you can be selling a digital copy of your book in 24 hours.
You can have a hard copy of the same book in a week
You can order your book 1 at a time or 10, 20 or even 1,000 at a time
You can make changes to your book quickly and inexpensively
You will be a published author
But the biggest difference in Self Publishing vs Traditional Publishing is in the royalties or profits.
If you are a published author, have a contract with a publishing company, have several successful books that you have already published, your publisher may give you a generous royalty or commission of 15% on the books sold. This means that a book selling for $20, you earn $3.
On the other hand, a self published book generally costs $10 or less to publish. If you sell the book for $20 and it costs you $10, your royalty or commission is 100% or $10 on each book sold.
To make $1,000, you would have to sell 100 self published books. You would have to sell 334 traditionally published books to make $1,000.
For more info, give us a call:
Mickey Mixon
New Media Consultant
832.443.8881 cell
281.491.0342 office
800.291.1004 toll free
800.988.8178 fax