The Truth About Self Publishing or Why You Don't Want to Self Publish

Self publishing comes in three different flavors.

• Pure Self Publishing - You do all the work. You get an editor (or not) to review and clean up your work. You make or purchase the graphic work for the cover. You get ISBNs for your books. You contract with printers and binders to produce your book.
• Vanity Publishing - You pay someone else to do all the above work.
• Subsidy or Hybrid Publishing - You pay for some of the features described above and the publisher pays for some.

What's wrong with self publishing? That depends on your goals. If you want to be a recognized author then everything is wrong.

Let’s face it. You have paid someone to publish your book. Your manuscript was not reviewed and selected for publication based on any consideration of your writing excellence or the importance of your topic. Your book was published because you had enough money to pay someone to do it. Your book may be excellent and worth of a Pulitzer prize but it carries  the stigma that you had to pay someone to get it published.

Most newspapers, magazines, radio and TV stations will not review your book. They believe that your book wasn’t good enough to be published by a traditional publisher so why should they review it. They already have plenty of books to review that have been weeded out by the publishing industry.

If you join writer’s forums you will find that there is a prejudice against self publishers. They may have a message board to announce your publication success but clearly state that you can’t post to it if you have self published in any way. They will let you post on the message board that is labeled for advertising.

If you submit your book for possible selection for awards such as best new author, it will be rejected.

For all most all purposes in the publication industry you are not a “real” author if your books are self published.

If your are an established speaker you may want to self publish. You already have an established basis for selling your books and you aren’t interested in becoming a recognized author. You can sell your books at your speaking engagements and get all the profits.

Tex Ware is a traditional publisher. At this time we admittedly do little in the way of publicity but we will not charge you one dime to publish your book or for any publicity that we engage.

Or advice is to not give up and self publish until you have exhausted all your traditional publishing leads.

For more information about the pitfalls of self publishing and advice about literary fraud, scams and schemes, please see http://www.sfwa.org/beware/.

Last updated: 04/12/10 08:50 AM

 

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