Self-publishing might sound like a lot of work (and may feel overwhelming if you don’t know where to start!), but anyone can self-publish a book if they know where to focus their attention (here’s how to do it!). But, why should we self-publish when there are perfectly good, professional, experienced publishing houses that can do it for us? Many authors still choose to work through a publisher, and it may be the best option for them. Here’s why you might want to consider self-publishing:
Self-publishing is relatively fast. In fact, you can have your book available for sale in a matter of days – in print and digital versions. For Lisa’s book, The Tale of Kale, we chose to upload it through CreateSpace (Amazon’s on-demand publishing tool). Once the book was written and edited (on our own timeline) all we had to do was upload the file and fill out information about our book.
You don’t have to deal with inventory or warehousing. Thanks to print-on-demand options, such as CreateSpace, authors no longer have to deal with inventory and warehousing. You simply upload the digital file, a customer purchases your book through Amazon, and Amazon prints and ships your book to them! If you do want copies of your book on-hand, you can order copies for yourself through CreateSpace (so you don’t need to pay the retail price).
It’s inexpensive. In addition to paying to store inventory, authors used to have to send manuscripts to publishers or invest a ton of their own money upfront. Authors who self-publish don’t have to worry about any of that.
You are in control of the creation of your book. Self-publishing allows you to create exactly what you envision, and leaves you in control of your content and pricing. Unlike when you work with a publisher, you will be able to share ALL of your book’s content however you’d like (digital downloads, blog posts, etc.) and you can adjust the prices (without having to worry about your publisher’s commission). Being in control of the creation of your own book is an exciting and rewarding process.
[inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=”via @bordenteam”]Self-publishing can save you time, money, and logistics.[/inlinetweet]If you’re wondering how to market your new book, check out this timeline for launching new projects. We’re here to help, as always. Happy writing!
Kindly note: We don’t like to refer to ourselves as “experts”, but we do take great pride in sharing our business advice, distilled down from our extensive research and (often) mind-blowingly frustrating experiences we’ve endured and learned from. We try our best to create a clear and humble approach to good business tactics that you and your teams can understand and turn into effective and productive revenue streams. We are actual, real people and look forward to supporting you in any way we can, whether it’s on the topic of this post, or other business development and marketing communications you may be involved in, or considering. We are proud of the services we provide; if you don’t see what you’re looking for, just ask us – we also take pride in being super responsive!
