A guest post by Sally Pederson
The last chapter of your book is finally complete. Now the big question—where do I publish it? Every author has a baby—the book—that has been nurtured for a considerable amount of time. You have two options for publishing your work; you can try your luck with a Publishing House or you can Self-Publish.
A publishing house can be a way to get the book printed but it has its own disadvantages and they are still very difficult to work with. They want a lot of control over your book and a lot of them require a large number of pre-orders if you are not a well-known author. The biggest disadvantage is the contract that is signed between the author and the publishing house which quite simply puts the author at the mercy of the publisher. In some cases they may want several rewrites of your book, require hundreds of pre-orders and pay you pennies for each copy sold.
There are many ways to circumvent the publisher altogether due to the fact that there are so many options to self-publish. Both seasoned and novice authors can self-publish through the newer
publishers who offer Print on Demand, Electronic Publishing, and Vanity Publishing services. Each of these formats kind of overlap and the line between them is blurred at times. But in its essence these publishers take the finished book from an author in a particular format, convert it, and publish it—online as e-books or physically (paperback, hardback, and so on).
The best part of self-publishing is that the author’s control on his/her work is not diluted. Also neither is his/her work subjected to scrutiny and changed to a point where it becomes unrecognizable as their work. Most publishing houses have their own interpretations of rules in grammar and style guides. Some publishing houses make contracts with their writers in such a way that the writer eventually gets the credit for the book but the work that gets published looks very unlike his/her own work.
An author puts a lot of effort in writing the book—but that’s just half the job done—a little extra effort in seeing the book through to print is not very difficult to do. There are many self-publishing companies that give authors the flexibility to work at their own pace and budget, to bring the book to print—whether electronically or physically.
Self-publishing authors have many options with a vast amount of companies that will handle everything including templates for book covers and payments. All you have to do is write your book, upload it to the websites, design a cover using their templates, decide upon a price and you are set to start selling your book. This is why I have decided to self-publish all of my books.
All said, self-publishing books not only gives an author control but also gives greater returns in terms of royalties. It’s the way to go for any author. Self-publishing is also very economical for publishers as there is no inventory and prints of the books are paid for when ordered. Self-publishing indeed is the future!
Written by Sally Pederson
