Benefits of Self-Publishing your book

Getting your book published with a commercial publisher is tough!

If you’ve ever tried sending your manuscript to a commercial publisher, you know it’s very difficult to get published. Most publishers won’t even look at your work if you don’t have a literary agent.

What’s worse, is that it’s almost just as hard to get a literary agent. That makes it double as difficult!

There are so many people that would love to get a book published. Some are amazing writers, some are okay, and others just downright stink. It’s the amazing writer’s that are able to send in an equally amazing story time after time to the publisher that will continue to get published.

You might feel like you are an amazing writer and you deserve to be heard, yet they refuse to publish your work. Sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands. If commercial publishing has proved to be a road block in your writing career, you need to find another way through.

Bypass editors and publish your work the way you want it

If you publish your book yourself, you don’t have to be held back by these commercial publishers. If you decide to publish your book yourself, you get to decide if your book is published or not.

Once you decide to self-publish your book, you can start making your own decisions. You know it’s going to be published, so you don’t have to worry that the publisher won’t like this part or those words. You can make it exactly the way you want.

With the freedom of self-publishing comes a certain amount of responsibility. Just because you could write a horrible book that’s dull and not entertaining doesn’t mean you should. Publish your book the way you want but keep in mind why you are publishing.

You want someone to read it, love it, and want more.

Speed up the process

Though I wouldn’t use this as a reason to self-publish over commercially publish, it is a nice benefit that sometimes self publishing can be a little quicker. The actual publishing part probably won’t be any faster, but you get to bypass the time it takes to find a literary agent, get them to like your book, send it to the publisher, get them to like your book, etc.

If you have to opportunity to get published commercially, don’t let speed hold you back.

Take a stab at your own book marketing

When you self-publish your book, you are responsible for marketing your book. You can’t just publish your book, print 1,000 copies and hope they sell. You have to promote and market your book.

For some, this may be a benefit, that you are in charge and can practice your marketing skills. For others, maybe even most, this means more effort and it could keep you from starting your next piece right away.

There are some cons to self publishing

Can be expensive

Considering you could get paid to be published commercially in the form of an advance, the price of publishing a few hundred or a few thousand copies could be very expensive. This is why you need to be 100% sure that it is what you want to do.

You have to carefully edit yourself

For some self-publishing companies, you will get a copyeditor who will check for spelling and grammar errors, but overall, it is your responsibility to get your book in perfect shape. You don’t have an editor that can give ideas on what to change and fix.

You aren’t backed by a commercial publishing company

Most people probably don’t look at who published the book they are reading, but they did find it in the store or online in their favorite section. When you publish a book commercial, they help you promote and market your book with press releases, advertising, and name brand.

When you are a new author self-publishing, you are responsible for branding yourself.

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