Tuesday, March 2, 2010

ALL THE REASONS NOT TO SELF PUBLISH #2

Wow, so you're all jazzed about publishing your own book. Well not so fast. In this blog I'm going to explain some hard core truths about publishing your own book and your own limitations. You are limited...you're only one person. You don't have a sales staff to fly around the country selling this, you don't even have a connection with buyers to sell it to the book stores. You can't afford real advertising, warehousing or even to the price to print a giant run of books. Depressed yet?

List of reasons why not to self publish:
1. Cost of publishing
2. You have to be the creator and sales person
3. As an artist you would rather sit in your studio
and draw than make cold calls and sales.
4. storing all those books
5. All the unknown stuff that goes with publishing- ISBN, Copyrights and more
6. What do you make your book about? Who will buy it?
7. What if I don't make any money on this? What if I lose money?

Okay, I want to keep the list of negatives small and basic here because the rest of the blog posts are going to be positive. We can do it! We will do it! And everyone will love the book I create! Now just remember this post is about my adventure in self publishing...there are a million ways to go about this so you might have a better way or a worst way, but this is how I'm going to do it. Believe me I will be very honest in these posts and if something works I'll tell you and if something doesn't work I'll complain and whine a bunch.

Next post:
How I Decided What to Self Publish

2 comments:

Chris G. said...

Hello, Steve. I have seen some of your posts on a couple of linkedin groups, and really like your work. Just wanted to let you know that I'm enjoying your posts on publishing.

I too have a children's book idea that I'm trying to develop. I haven't gotten to the finished stage yet, but I have reading a lot of advice about self-publishing vs. traditional, and there seems to be no end of debate on which is better.

It helps to hear from someone who has done both. I look forward to your future posts on the subject.

Thanks!

Unknown said...

Thanks Chris. I don't know if one is better than the other. With traditional publishing you know you'll get a paycheck and some real bragging rights. With self publishing you get all the control, but there's a lot more work and a financial investment you have to shoulder.

Glad your enjoying it.