I get a lot of questions about how self-publishing works, so I thought I’d try to answer some of those questions here. First of all, traditional publishing means you sell your manuscript to a publisher and they handle all the copyediting, cover design, placement in bookstores, etc. Self-publishing means you do all those things yourself. Once an author is well-known, traditional publishers will also help with marketing, but when it comes to newbies, marketing pretty much falls on the author, no matter how you publish.
Self-publishing, or independent publishing, is all print-on-demand now. That means you upload your files, and the printing company you are using prints the book only after receiving orders for it. This makes self-publishing much easier than it used to be. You no longer have to buy massive quantities of books, store them in your attic, and ship them out one-by-one.
Self-publishing requires a lot of work and an investment if you want to do it well. I pay a graphic designer to help me design and format my books. I pay an editor to copyedit my manuscripts. I pay two other people to help me with creating content and social media. While it can be exhausting at times, I have learned so much about the publishing business by doing this and have learned how to market my own books, so I am grateful for the hard-earned knowledge.
The two most popular self-publishing companies are Kindle Direct Publishing through Amazon and Ingram Spark through Ingram, and each company has its positives and negatives.
It is easier to publish on KDP, and you will make more money per book. Ingram Spark is a middle man – they get a cut, the bookstore gets a cut, you get a cut, and then there is the printing cost. So if your book sells for $10, and the printing costs are $3, then the bookstore gets $4.50, Ingram Spark gets $1.50, and you get $1. On Amazon, for the same $10 book, the printing costs are $3, Amazon gets $4, and you get $3. (These numbers are made up. Printing costs will vary depending on the size of your book, whether it’s in color or black and white, and how many pages it is.)
KDP is also nice because you can see daily reports of how many books are shipped. This allows you to track your marketing efforts to see if what you are doing is paying off. If your marketing is working, you will see a spike in sales.
However, as a self-published author, it is extremely difficult to get into bookstores. If your ultimate goal is to sell in stores, then Ingram is your company. Ingram is the biggest book distributor in the US and what most bookstores use to purchase books. If you want bookstores to be able to buy your book, it needs to be available on Ingram.
But how do you get it noticed by booksellers? While you can pay to have your book included in the Ingram catalogue, it is huge and filled with thousands of books. The best way to garner the attention of booksellers is to host events at bookstores so they buy your book. But obviously it’s impossible to visit every bookstore in the country. This is the biggest disadvantage to self-publishing. When you publish traditionally, you have a much higher chance of bookstores and libraries buying your book.
So what’s the takeaway? My advice is only to self-publish if you are positive you can sell your book. Self-publishing takes a lot of time and money. If you’re hoping to publish a book for fun or for your family to read, then by all means, go for it! But if you want to publish for the general population and actually sell your book, take these thoughts into consideration. And whatever you choose, I wish you the best of luck and success!