On Self-Publishing

Self-publishing still has a bad reputation. It’s something to feed one’s vanity. It’s clearly ‘lesser than’ being published by a proper publishing house. It’s not something a serious author would do. While this used to be true in the past, at least to a degree, modern means of publishing — including self-publishing — have opened up new avenues for books to reach their readers. Self-publishing is better than its reputation (and then there’s the topic of indie publishing, too).

Some authors choose self-publishing to keep control over their work. The moment an author signs a contract with a literary agency or a publishing house, they do lose control over their manuscript and that can be really bad.
Usually, contracts leave the author little influence as to where, when, and if the book ever sees the light of day. The literary agency chooses which publishing houses to offer the manuscript to. The publishing house decides on when and how to publish the book, usually sets the genre and sub-genre, may make severe changes to the text and change the title. The cover might severely misrepresent what the main character is supposed to look like or give people completely wrong expectations of what the book will include.
Yet, in the end it is the author who gets blamed for all of this — it’s their book, after all, and their name is on the cover. An author who has been through this, perhaps even several times, might choose to self-publish or indie publish instead and keep control of their manuscript.

Some authors self-publish because their book is part of a niche market. Big publishing houses usually do not serve the niche markets and the only way to get the book out can be to self- or indie publish it.
Publishing houses have only one interest: to make money with their books. This means that they’ll be on lookout for possible future bestsellers. They look for books similar to what they already publish, similar to what sold well in the past. While this might be short-sighted, it’s how the business works. Well-known authors with a lot of bestsellers under their belt are wanted — and often can take more influence on how their book will look in the end. New authors who are focused on the same audience as other best-selling authors also have it easier to be published, because the publisher expects that their book will perform similarly well.
Everyone whose book is written for a more niche market, on the other hand, stands little chance to get published that way. The niche market doesn’t turn a lot of profit, the publishing house might not even want to be connected to it (such as a conservative publisher not wanting to publish homosexual romance stories). Self-publishing or indie publishing are the way out and bring those books to their niche audience, enriching the book market.

Self-publishing is also a lot of work. It’s not just about writing your manuscript and all is done.
After writing, the first step is usually editing the text. This can and usually will include content editing, copy editing, and line editing (as I have no printed versions of my books, I do not line edit, but I have to do the other two). Content editing is looking into the content — making sure that there are no illogical parts in the story and all threads are tied up nicely in the end (or as nicely as is possible in a series). Content editing might include rewriting big parts of a text, especially for discovery writers. Copy editing means looking for typos, wrong words, and every kind of grammar mistake. This is usually the most tiring process, as you need to go over the text several times to be sure to catch them all (or at least most of them). Line editing, finally, happens once the printing is organised and gives the editor (in self-publishing, the author) the chance to make sure that there are no widows or orphans (single last or first lines on the page belonging to a longer paragraph) and, ideally, no chapters ending with one or two lines on a new page. As said above, I do not do the last one myself, as I’m not self-publishing in print so far.
Writing a blurb is the next step, so there is a way to advertise the book to the reader on the platforms on which it can be bought. This is something entirely different from writing a story — this is advertising and needs a new skill set.
A book needs a cover, so then it’s about creating a cover for your book. This might be easier if you have a series going and have kept a template, but it still needs work every time you want to put out a new book. Design is also a different skill set from writing a book.
After all of this is done, the next step is to actually put the book online. I personally put my e-books up at Amazon and use Draft 2 Digital for the rest. By now, D2D also does Amazon as a platform, but I don’t want the work of pulling all of my books from my Amazon account to re-upload them through D2D. This can take quite a while, depending on how well your program can format and what way you upload. I personally am quite happy I can upload the .epub format after making it with Scrivener by now.
After this, there’s still advertising to do (also not a regular skill for an author) and a website to keep working and updated these days. This is something I have to look into again, as my Google-sites website just doesn’t really cut it.

The difference between indie publishing and self-publishing, by the way, is that most of the steps above are done by hired professionals if you have the money to do indie publishing instead. Like this, the author doesn’t need to learn all the other skills, but they have to pay people who have them.

In the modern day, self-publishing is no longer just a vanity project. It can be, but it’s much less likely to be one these days than it might have been in the past. There are good reasons for self- or indie publishing. The author can keep control of their own manuscript and make sure it is not advertised wrongly or changed beyond recognition. The author can write for a niche market which the publishing houses ignore. It’s a lot of work — or costs a lot of money —, but it is perfectly viable and can be the best choice for any and all manuscripts.