The Great Debate: To Publish or To Self-Publish

‘Only good writing is published. The rest is self-published.’

But is this a fair assessment? Is every book you’ve plucked off the shelf tightly written, well structured with gripping beginnings and endings? How many times have you slammed a book shut in disgust after slogging through the first ten pages of absolute rubbish? Do publishers really know what their readers want? And do some books get the nod just because of an author’s name?

In the past, many writers shied away from the option of self-publishing their books. They turned their noses up at the idea, labelling this form of bookselling as vanity press. The belief was that if a book hadn’t received the stamp of approval from a publisher, then it wasn’t good enough for the market. Self-published books belonged to would-be writers and wannabees.

But the climate is changing. Publishers are closing their doors to new writers and unsolicited manuscripts as their slush piles rise. If it isn’t hard enough to get your foot in a publisher’s door, now even literary agents are taking the same stance. Whereas in the past, writers might have had a better chance of being published through representation by a literary agent, these days, it’s impossible to find an agent whose doors are open.

So is it just ego preventing writers travelling down the self-publishing road?

To answer that question, let’s look at the pros and cons of self-publishing.

The Benefits of Self-Publishing

Full Control

When you hand over your much-slaved-over manuscript to a publisher, and it is accepted, you lose a certain amount of control over the end product. Writers report varying experiences of being consulted by publishers about the cover and illustrations. Some publishers, of course, are better to work with than others. But at the end of the day, the appearance of the book might not be quite what the writer had intended.

When a book is self-published, the control is fully in the hands of the writer. Paper type, font size and appearance, cover design and use of illustrations all rest with the author. The only negotiation or possible areas of tension might crop up between the writer and graphic designer—who is drafting the cover—or an illustrator—who is interpreting the writer’s story into pictures. But the writer has the benefit of choosing the graphic designer and the illustrator, and finding someone else if the relationship fails.

Another major control issue involves the content. With the self-published book, every word is your own. There’s no pulling your hair out when an editor asks for changes that you just don’t agree with, like alterations to the plot, characters, choice of words. You could even be asked to chop your favourite scene or chapter, or your main character could be asked to undergo a personality change.

In the self-published book, the choice is yours. It’s your book and you have the say about what goes in it. In saying that, it is wise to produce a high quality piece of writing, so having it edited and proofread by a professional would be advisable. You don’t want typos and grammatical errors to lessen the quality of your prized book.

Increased Income

Published authors get only 10 percent of the recommended retail price for the first print run. Don’t kid yourself that the promised increase of a further 2.5 percent in the second print run will be worth it. Only if you’re a best selling author will you be blessed with further print runs. These days, not many publishers approve a second print run. Why? Their expectations are high, much higher than they were say, five years ago. If you’ve sold all the books in your first print run over two years—say, 8,000 books—this often isn’t a sign of success or future sales in the publisher’s eyes.

With self-publishing, you get a much higher percentage on each book sale once you’ve deducted the print cost of each book. For example, if one book cost you $10 to print and you sell it for $30, your percentage gain is 66 percent. That’s quite a bit different to the 10 percent offered by publishers.

Pride of Ownership

When you’ve produced your own book, spent all the hours bringing it to life, there’s a certain amount of pride in your achievement. There’s a story to how you created your book, worked on the cover, thought about colours etc.

Freedom to Sell

Under some contracts with publishers, authors are not entitled to sell their books. This means that when they do author talks, they can only direct people to bookshops, with their fingers crossed that the shop still stocks their book and that the person won’t lose the impetus to go in search of it.

At least when you have your own books, you can take them with you and sell them personally to your audience, even sign them if people ask.

You can also set up a website and sell them online. And there are other sites on the net where you can display and sell your book.

The Downside of Self-Publishing

Marketing

Marketing is the dirty word in the author’s vocabulary. They hate it, argue strongly that they shouldn’t have to market their books, just write them.

The self-publisher has sole responsibility for the marketing side of the publishing process. NO publicity officer is there to make the contacts, organise the interviews and reviews.

But author beware! Being published by a reputable publisher doesn’t mean the author can sit back and rest on his or her laurels; let the publishing staff do all the work.

I learned this the hard way when my first book was published. In fact, I was so naive about the importance of promotion and marketing that I avoided some aspects of it, and even turned down some events organised by my publicity officer. It was only a couple of years after my book came out that I started to understand that authors, whether published or self-published, have to engage in marketing on a regular basis.

Book Shops Attitudes

It’s true that bookshops are very reluctant to stock self-published books. Unless you’ve received good publicity through radio interviews or a newspaper review, they’d rather not take your book. And it’s a lot of work lugging your stock around to shops in your area, let alone post them off to stores in other states.

Publishers have the benefit of distribution agencies. For the self-published, enticing a distributor to take on your book is like getting a tortoise to sprint. Sometimes it’s just not worth the effort. And, of course, the profits go down dramatically. The distributor gets a cut and so does the book shop. You might end up with only 35 percent of the recommended retail price. Then you have to deduct your printing costs, which lowers your profit even more

Access to Libraries

Again, librarians prefer the published books. So it’s up to you to convince them your story is good enough. Once more, it’s a matter of traipsing round to all the libraries, leaving them with a copy of your book, hoping they will read and buy it.

What’s the Bottom Line?

Being published doesn’t make you exempt from the onus of marketing. And there are other things about being published that give an author nightmares.

• Royalty statements are often incomprehensible.

You often see minus signs next to huge figures, which confuse you. Have you been selling books? And how do you know you received that advance for the audio version that you were promised?

• CAL payments.

Authors and publishers are reimbursed for the loss of income through photocopying of books in educational institutions. But in some cases, the publisher gets the payment, which they are supposed to pass on to the author. Because of the way royalty statements are drawn up, the author is none the wiser as to whether they’ve received their Cal payment.

• Contract and Rights.

For first time authors, you’re so excited about being published that you’d probably sign anything. Some end up signing away rights they later wish they’d kept. For example, you might decide down the track to set up a website and sell your book electronically, only to discover that you’ve given up these rights and can’t reclaim them for 10 years.

International rights are another issue. Your publisher might be doing very little to market your book overseas because they feel it has local interest only. Without these rights, you don’t have the choice of finding a market overseas.

So neither form of publishing is straightforward or stress-free. But the beauty of self-publishing lies in the increased profits, the control and the ownership. If only we could get rid of the ego aspect.

(Copyright: Janet Shaw 2007)