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What Is Self Publishing?

What Is Self Publishing? My Explaination:

A self publisher, is an author who gets a business license, buys the ISBN #s, hires a printing press (print shop/printer) to print the books, than sells the books themselves. The author keeps 100% of the profits, because no one pays royalties; you keep 100% of the copyright (which btw, does not cost a penny). You market the book and distribute the book yourself through local bookstores, a personal Website, your blog, and on online bookstores such as Amazon.com.

Self-Publishing gets it's name from the fact that the author does everything themselves.

The author gets their book printed up in two common ways:

1) They hire a local or online print shop to print up the book all at once. Most printers require a 5, 000-copy minimum, with cash up front, though it is common, for printers to require a minimum of 20, 000 copies. Printing up your books in this manner, unfortunately requires the author to have a very large sum of money all at once. If you choose this method, be sure you have taken into account the cost of printing the book, which for most writers is rarely under $30, 000 and often more than $200, 000, and this money has to be paid to the printer BEFORE they will print up your book.

2.) The other method is to hire a print-on-demand printer. These may or may-not ask for money up front, depending on how they run their business. To find out more about print-on-demand, simply scroll down to the POD section of this article.

It should be noted, that regardless of the method you use to have your book printed, you are the publisher. The company that printed your book up, is just a printer and only a printer, never are they considered the publisher.

What Wikipedia says about Self-Publishing: Self-publishing is the publishing of books, micropublishing on-line works and other media by the authors of those works, rather than by established, third-party publishers, or by vanity presses. Although it represents a small percentage of the publishing industry in terms of sales, it has been present in one form or another since the beginning of publishing and has seen an increase in activity with the advancement of publishing technology, including xerography, desktop publishing systems, print on demand, and the World Wide Web. Cultural phenomena such as the punk/DIY movement, the proliferation of media channels, and blogging have contributed to the advancement of self-publishing...read the rest of the Wikipedia article

Should You Self Publish?

Only you can answer that question. There are hundreds of reasons to self publish your book. Likewise there are hundreds of reasons NOT to self publish your book.

I self publish, and people always are asking me if I recommend it to others, and you know what? They get shocked when I don't! Why? Well, for me, self publishing works, because I write in a very tiny niche, for which there is almost zero interest and is next to impossible to find a publisher for, simply because my niche is "not marketable enough". I write chap-books (too long for a short story, too short to be a novel), short story anthologies, plays, and niched non-fiction. So, for me it works because the sales market is so small, that I'm able to personally market to pretty much every one interested in the niche. It is pointless for me to even attempt to traditionally publish my stuff, because there simply is not enough demand to warrant it being mass produced.

However, if I was going to write something that would cover a wide audience, I'd send it out to traditional publishers, because they are better equipped to reach the mass market.

Of course the other thing is, I don't as a general rule write novels either. There is a huge world of difference from self-pubbing plays, anthologies, and small niche non-fiction books, and trying to self publish a mass marketable fiction novel. Self-pubbing fiction is very hard to do and not recommended (by me) to anyone seeking a wide readership.

As a general rule, self publish only if you are writing one of the following:

a short story anthology
a book of poems
a technical journal (which will only be read by a 100 or so college professors)
a non-fiction niche market (alien abductions interviews; sky-diving how tos; etc.)
By Wendy C. Allen a.k.a. EelKat - Autistic author, artist, fashion designer, CosPlayer, dollmaker, rooster & feral cat rescuer, P&G boycotter, Faerie folklorist, and alien contactee.

Find me @

eelkat.wordpress.com

twitter.com/eelkat...

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9 Jan 2010 at 11:02pm

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