An increasing number of authors are choosing to go with self publishing companies rather than approach a traditional publisher with their work. This means that more authors are getting their voices heard in a larger market – and if you have a story, self publishing can put you in more direct touch with your market than working through a publisher.
Self publishing is power for any writer who can learn how to use it right. Whether you’ve published your work before through a traditional publisher or not, self publishing is a great avenue to connect with readers and market your work directly to them.
Here are some of the benefits of self publishing companies versus traditional publishing in 2019.
Many Great Self Publishing Platforms Exist
There are more self publishing platforms out there today than there were ten or fifteen years ago. This has made it easier for writers to access these platforms, and easier for readers to find the work of their favorite authors.
Self publishing platforms can also get your work listed on mainstream platforms like Amazon an offers writers a unique form of control.
Reedsy, Lulu and directly through Amazon are three of the most popular platforms to self publish. There are more, and most of them are easy to use and convenient to manage. (Information like books sold and who has been buying them can be right at your fingertips.)
Self Publishing Can Be Faster
Self publishing can often times be a lot faster than seeing your work published through a traditional outlet. Writing and proper editing can take months to years, and once the manuscript has reached the publisher, it can take several more months (sometimes even years) to see a book published when it’s accepted – and that’s not including the amount of possible rejections that a manuscript could face.
Working with a professional proofreader, you can have your manuscript ready to publish once it has been checked for errors and formatted for publication. There’s no 12-month lead time or 4-book contract obligation. You publish when you’re ready.
Sales Statistics Are At Your Control
Publishing through a company like Reedsy or Lulu puts you, the author, in control of sales statistics. Traditional publishers send out a royalty statement a few times per year on a set schedule, and you’ll only know what you’ve made during their bi-annual or quarterly statement.
If you’re self publishing, you can access the sales statistics at any point, and you can often cash out any royalties that you’ve earned straight to your account without waiting for the next “scheduled publisher payment” to roll around.
Self Publishing Can Be More Profitable
If you’ve ever seen a traditional royalty check from a publisher, you’ll know that writers make only a fraction of the profits on the books they sell. This only makes a book profitable at all (for either the author or publisher) if it’s an overnight bestseller with several prints – and for most authors, this can take several tries. This is one reason why traditional publishing contracts are now harder to come by than ever for writers, even for really good ones.
Authors Lead Promotion
Traditional book publishing usually works like this: Book sales peak during the release, sometimes up until a second or third print. But then they slow down after this, and often publishers will stop aggressively promoting the book until things die down.
This is the case with huge bestsellers, too.
With self-publishing, you can release a next print of your book any time you like. It puts you in control, and you can choose to promote your book during any point in its life cycle, whether you wrote it ten weeks ago or ten years back.