#Marketing Mondays: Self-Publishing Vs. Traditional Publishing

Self-Publishing Vs. Traditional Publishing

Self-Publishing versus Traditional publishing that is the question. Would it be easier to self-publish and make sure that your book gets published, or would it be better to have an agent help you with getting published? The answer is that you are taking a risk either way. If you decide to self-publish there is a lot more work for you to do. If you choose to use the traditional route you have to make sure that you are fully edited and query the right agents. It also depends on what you feel comfortable with when taking the next step.

Would you rather have the events set up for you as opposed to you doing it all yourself? Well, it isn’t just that easy. To get published traditionally you have to query many agents and possibly get a lot of rejection letters. With self-publishing, you get published, but your work needs to be edited and changed by you so that you can generate interest in your work.

Self-Publishing Vs Traditional Publishing

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Pros of Self-Publishing:

The writer has creative control. The author gets to say what their book looks like and how it is marketed. They are the ones that are driving the sales for this book, so they control what happens with it. In traditional publishing, they are given certain things that they may not agree with but have to do because they are under contract.
You don’t have a contract. You get all the royalties and income from your book sales. Yes, a company like Amazon may take a percentage, but it is not like what a publishing company would do.
You don’t have to wait to publish. With traditional publishing, it could take a long time to publish as opposed to when you self-publish it can be out there today. You get paid within the first two months as opposed to traditional publishing where you cannot budget around what you make.

Cons of Self-Publishing:

You have creative control. Having creative control can be a good and a bad thing depending on what you genuinely want to do with your work.
Having editing mistakes. You can cause people not to read your book because of all the grammatical errors involved with your work.
You have to do all the work. Having to do all the work can be time-consuming and cost you a lot of money. With traditional publishing, all of this can be done for you.

Self-Publishing Vs Traditional Publishing

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Pros of Traditional Publishing:

Having notoriety and getting more attention. Having a reputation helps you to sell more books and gives you a sense of accomplishment.
No upfront costs. You only have to query to agents trying to get them to read your manuscript.
Easier distribution. When publishing traditionally, you get a more extensive range of people to sell to because the publishers have more connections.

Cons of Traditional Publishing:

You don’t have creative control. With traditional publishing, they try to tell you what way they think your story should go and what you should do with it.
You don’t publish for a long time. It can take a long time to publish through traditional methods.
Less royalty is coming to you. You have to deal with low royalty rates.

As you can see, there are pros and cons to each type of publishing. You choose how you want to present your work to the world because you are in control of what it becomes. Good luck with any path you may take because you are the key to your own success.