3 Things to Ask Yourself Before Self Publishing

Welcome to the first in a series of self publishing posts. Millions of people have flocked to the self publishing boom, which has led to both wonderful and tragic results. Thousands of people jumped on the band wagon of self publishing, followed the trends and flooded the market with stories both long and short in an effort to either jump start a career or make a few easy bucks. But then there are others who genuinely wanted to self publish for their own reasons. Whether it be the flexibility, total control or because of backlist sitting and collecting dust.

When I started writing my only desire was to jot down the stories in my head and maybe print a couple copies to sit on my shelf. Nothing more. However, after my critique group read my first book, Dead Awakenings, and told me that I needed to publish it I got the idea that maybe publishing with a big publisher might be nice. So I pursued a traditional publisher and sold.

After that I sold my series, The Society, to Kensington and I realized something. For all of the wonderful things that traditional publishers could offer me, one thing that couldn’t be offered was more than one, or max two, books being released in a year.

My fairytale retelling series, Fairelle, was due to have nine books and seven novellas and I knew I didn’t want to be writing that series for eight years. With over sixty book ideas in my head at present I needed to be putting out at least three books a year in that series for my own sanity. So I decided to self publish.

Self publishing is a personal decision and different for everyone, but there are several things you should ask yourself before you self publish.

1) Am I ready to do everything it takes? The marketing, formatting, writing, editing, uploading, taxes, ARCs, barcodes, ISBN’s, etc.

You have to be both author and publisher. It becomes a real business when you decide to self publish. Your business.

You wouldn’t open a retail business without expertise or having employees lined up with expertise. You wouldn’t open the doors to said store without having ever taken a business class or knowing your market. Becoming your own publisher is a business. It’s a full time job and needs to have all of its facets looked at before dive in. So do your research and get your ducks in a row first.

2) Am I only doing this because I keep being rejected or because it’s what I really want?

If you are being rejected over and over have you looked at why? Is it because you don’t fit into a genre or is it because your story, plot or characters need work? Any weaknesses your book has will not go away simply because you self publish.

Lots of people self publish for great reasons. Lack of being picked up because of story issues isn’t always a great one. It’s true that sometimes your story just doesn’t fit into the small box that traditional publishing is looking for. But you need to make sure that it isn’t because of other problems. Those problems will do nothing more than lead to bad reviews and poor sales.

3) Do I have the time and money involved in do it all myself and doing it right?

Editors cost money. Good cover art costs money. Ads and marketing all costs money. ISBN’s, proofreading, formatting, and and and… On average it costs me up to a thousand dollars to publish one of my books. You need to plan on at least half that to publish right.

And if you plan on doing it all yourself (see above comment about expertise) to save money, how much time will it take you to do all of that yourself? Hours, Days, Months. It takes a lot.

So before you decide to self publish, ask yourself why you want to and if you have what it takes to get it done. If so, it can be one of the best experiences you will ever have. If not it can leave you bitterly disappointed.

Rebekah R. Ganiere – Books with a Bite

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