The Advantages and Disadvantages of Self-Publishing
Before looking at the advantages and disadvantages of self-publishing, let
me first make few distinctions between two types of self-publishing:
Old vs. New Self-Publishing
- Old-style self-publishers create their book by hiring
an editor, designer, and typesetter or they may do all those tasks themselves.
However, they are disconnected from the Internet and the bookstore and library
system. They find their own printer and make their basement or garage into
a distribution centre.
- New-style self-publishers take greater advantage of
Internet-based technologies.
- At one end of the spectrum of this approach, authors
pay a print-on-demand publishing company such as Lulu to take their
word-processing file, create the book pages, and then make the book available –
sometimes just to the author, sometimes more broadly – on
an offset-printing basis or a print-on-demand basis.
- In the middle of the spectrum, authors pay higher fees
to the book-services companies to procure more hands-on attention from editors
and designers and even from marketing people. These authors usually publish
their book on a print-on-demand basis. In some cases, their books are available
through online "e-tail" sites.
- At the other end of the spectrum, authors actually set
up publisher accounts with companies such as Lightning
Source and Book Surge. Some of them remain one-book publishers;
others publish additional books by themselves or others. The books are
available for sale through the major bookstore e-tail sites, such as the amazon sites
in Canada, the U.S., and the UK.
Now, let’s take a look at …
THE ADVANTAGES OF SELF-PUBLISHING
1. Control. Self-publishing authors retain control of their book. They
can stay true to their vision of the book and give it the kind of attention that
a publisher with many books to mind cannot give.
2. Cost and Timing. While self-publishers put their own money into the
production of their book, they can see the results of their efforts much more
quickly than when they go through the traditional book-publishing approach, and
therefore may be able to recoup their costs more quickly.
3. Their Only Option. It may seem odd to see this as an advantage, but
it is. If all attempts to secure a publisher have failed, self-publishing may
be the only way authors are going to get their book into the light of day. The
downside is the cost and effort put into this creation of something that
otherwise would not exist. The (admittedly rare) upside is the creation of a
book that becomes a major success.
4. Market. Traditional publishing houses are often not
calibrated finely enough to sell to specific, author-related markets.
A keynote speaker, for example, has access to his other audience in a way that
most book publishers wouldn’t. Most family histories have a very limited
market, and therefore are an obvious example of books that are more suitable
for self-publishing. “There is no more successful publisher than the publisher
of one book,” was the wise statement made by one member of the publishing board
I sat on for many years when we were faced with the opportunity to sign up a
self-published book.
THE DISADVANTAGES OF SELF-PUBLISHING
1. Quality. It is well know that doctors should never operate on members of
their own family, and that a client who acts as his own lawyer has a fool for a
client.
In these two cases, the problem is loss of objectivity. In the case of
self-publishing, authors can be so caught up in the writing of their book that
they protect sentences or paragraphs or even whole chapters that an editor
would recommend cutting. The authors are too close to their work. They are
reading it for themselves, whereas the editor is reading it for potential
buyers.
In traditional publishing, the author is the intellectual owner of the
writing and licenses the publisher (if the publisher makes an offer to publish)
to handle all publishing details. The value of this division of labor is
particularly clear when it comes to book covers. I once bowed to an author’s
wish to design the cover of his book. He was a designer himself and made a good
case for doing the work himself. Big mistake. Bad cover. It seems that the use
of the brain and heart to design a book is simply too different from their use
in writing a book.
2. Market. The self-publisher’s marketing capability is often
calibrated too narrowly to reach a book’s ideal market. That is,
self-publishing authors may write on a broad topic worthy of a broad readership
but lack the ability or resources to reach that readership.
3. Buyer beware. This will be the topic of a later blog post, but I find the
description of the services offered by the Lulus and Xlibrises of this world to
be confusing and the results doubtful. Self-publishing authors can end up
paying for services that they are unhappy with.
And another thing: It’s one thing for authors to be ignored by their
traditional publisher, who after all hasn’t required them to put their own
money into the project. It’s quite another for them to be ignored by
individuals taking care of their book at a large Internet book-services firm
when their firms are also sending them invoices for their services at
an alarmingly regular rate.
DB