Why Freelance Writers Should Self-Publish
If you’re reading this, then you’re probably a writer.
And it’s probably occurred to you that since writing is what you do so well, you might as well turn your writing into a book, and get all the credibility, fame, and fortune that comes with it.
Well, credibility, anyways. 
But the one thing holding you back has been a publisher – you don’t have one, and you don’t know how to get one.
Well, I’ve got news for you – even if you had a traditional publisher, it wouldn’t do you much good, and you will get the most mileage out of your work if you self-publish.
Here’s why…
Why Publish At All?
There are a lot of great reasons why a freelancer might want to publish a book about their subject of expertise:
- Book deals come with a big fat advance payment.
- Having authored a book gives you enough credibility to double your hourly rate.
- The publisher’s marketing department will take care of getting the book sold.
- You can kick back and enjoy life while living off of book royalties.
Sounds great, right?
Except that things don’t work that way anymore.
There are a lot of problems with the traditional publishing industry (their current business model hasn’t evolved much since the 1930s, and they are dying for disruption), but the two biggest problems for aspiring authors today are margins, and marketing.
Let’s start with margins…
The Problem of Margins
Margins are a big problem for aspiring authors, because most aspiring authors don’t realize how slim those margins are. I’m talking about profit margins, of course.
There are a lot of people waiting in line to take a cut out of the retail price of the book; the retailer has to make money, and so does the publisher, plus there are the costs of actually printing and producing the book.
When everyone has taken their cut, it isn’t unusual for the author to be left with only a couple of dollars out of a retail price of $17.95. Contrast that with the $3-$12 that you will earn on each copy of your book that you sell if you self-publish (depending on which channel they sell through).
What that means is that a book publisher will need to sell 2-6 times as many books as you could on your own, just for you to make the same amount of money.
Which would be fine, except…
Do All the Marketing Yourself?
It used to be that the big advantage of a traditional publisher was the marketing muscle that they brought to bear for your new book, but that is a thing of the past.
Now, don’t get me wrong – publishers definitely market some of their books, and if your name is J.K. Rowling, Dan Brown, Jack Canfield or Paulo Coelho, you can count on a massive marketing budget to put your work in front of hordes of eager buyers.
But I’m going to assume that your past works don’t include Harry Potter, The Da Vinci Code, Chicken Soup for the Soul, or The Alchemist.
Actually, let’s be safe and assume that you’ve never published a book before in your life.
Well, in that case, you can probably expect the publisher to list your new book in their catalogue, send out a press release, and politely ask bookstores to put your work on their shelves for a few weeks to see if anybody bites.
That’s it, that’s all. The rest is up to you.
In fact, many publishers won’t even give serious consideration to submissions from new authors that don’t include a marketing plan.
So in short, the publisher will expect you to do the bulk of the marketing work yourself, but they are going to keep a hefty cut of the book’s retail price. Does that make sense to you?
The Solution: Do It Yourself
Thankfully, there is a better option – you can skip the publisher altogether (along with the bureaucratic red tape of query letters and lengthy approval processes), and just publish the book yourself.
Don’t cringe at the thought of all the extra work, and don’t imagine that you’ll have to stock thousands of copies of your new book in your basement, and make daily trips to the post office to send them out to your customers.
That might have been the case once, but it isn’t the case any longer.
Using print-on-demand (POD) services like CreateSpace or Lulu, you can get everything setup and good to go, without having to handle any of the production, inventory, or fulfillment issues yourself.
They will produce a quality printed book that can be bought in major outlets like Amazon.com and your local bookstore (if you request it there), and your margins will be a lot better than if you had gone through a traditional publisher.
And will they market the book for you? No, they won’t – but neither would a traditional publisher, anyway!
What about Credibility? Is Self-Publishing Serious?
The stigma around self-publishing relates to quality. If you can just take a word document, slap a template cover graphic onto it, and push it to Amazon, then can’t anyone turn any piece of garbage into a published book?
Unfortunately, the answer is yes. The blessing of low barriers to entry is also a curse, and that has led to a lot of poor quality content.
All that means is that you need to write a good book. In other words, you have to:
- Think about, plan, research, and write a piece of work that will be valuable to your readers.
- Get the book laid out, typeset, edited, and proofread – if you don’t know how to do this yourself, then hire someone who does.
- Get a cover professionally designed – don’t try to hack it yourself unless you’re a professional designer!
- Put a solid book marketing plan together (you’ll have to do this anyways). There are great resources out there to help you with this.
Is this a lot of work? Yes, it is – but really, the bulk of the work is still in writing the book, and you’d have to do that anyways.
Time for an Example: Engagement from Scratch!
The reason I’ve been thinking a lot about self-publishing lately is that I’m in the process of self-publishing a new book called Engagement from Scratch! How Super Community Builders Create a Loyal Audience and How You Can Do the Same!
I’ve chosen to self-publish, despite having high-profile co-authors whose names could probably have landed a publisher without too much difficulty (Guy Kawasaki, Brian Clark, Mitch Joel, and many others). I made that choice for all of the reasons that I listed above in this post.
I took the time to plan out what I wanted to do with the book, and how I could most effectively create a super-valuable experience for readers. I paid for someone to edit and proofread, got a cover professionally designed, and put a solid marketing plan together. I even created a video trailer to promote the book.
Will the book be successful? Will it lead to all the wonderful outcomes that I’m hoping for?
Time will tell. Ultimately, it will depend on the quality of the final product, and whether the information presented therein will be truly valuable to my readers.
Fingers crossed that it will!
Over to you – have you ever thought of publishing a book? Have you considered self-publishing? Why or why not?
Photo credit: Some rights reserved by kirstypargeter.
Leave a Comment
Thank you very much to the Freelance Switch team for publishing this post. If anyone has questions, just leave a comment, and I’ll do my best to answer!
Hmm, I took a class from a published author, and she said the industry wont take self-publishing as being published. Sad, with all the technology we have to do this, they wont respect it.
However, who needs them? Look at the girl in England who self-published to Amazon’s Kindle format and made over $2 million. To make that on a single book in the industry you would have to be the likes of Stephen King.
Great article, thank you.
John, I’ve heard that sort of feedback from published authors (and publishers) as well, but I think they’re biased in that they have an interest in preserving the perceived “specialness” of their status as published authors.
It’s true that some parts of the industry (like awards) are biased against self-publishing, but those things matter less and less anyway, as you pointed out with the examples of Stephen King, and all the money that is being made by self-published authors on non-traditional formats.
Anyway, that’s just my two cents.
John, I could imagine this same argument being made in the music industry. For example, a large record label is going to say, “you’re nothing without us”.
Yet, how many current artists were discovered on youtube or online? Very many!
In any industry, I think it’s the worth of your actual work versus who’s published or represented by who. A book that sucks but is published by a bigger company isn’t going to necessarily do better than a great book with homegrown roots.
At this point in time, it makes a lot of sense for a budding writer to self-publish. Today’s technology has broken down the barriers that once stood in the way for an unknown author. And with sales channels like Lulu, iBooks, Smashwords, Amazon, Blurb and many others, it’s a great opportunity as people transition more and more to e-books (sorry, Sendak).
But the central challenge remains the same: to be a success, you have to produce a truly remarkable, professional product. Your writing chops have to be top grade with time devoted to editing properly. Typesetting and cover design have to be polished and compete with traditionally published books. It’s hard work, time and patience that will win out in the end.
Ultimately, it should be about the joy of writing and sharing ideas with the world, whether or not fame or fortune follow.
I absolutely agree with you, Gary.
Without a truly remarkable, professional product, you won’t be successful as a writer. That’s always been the case, and it isn’t going to change anytime soon. (Not to mention the marketing skills required to get the word out!)
But at least now the writers who have what it takes can get their work out there, without having to cut through the publishing industry’s red tape.
I think you should at least ATTEMPT to traditional publish this book. My .02. I review indie books for a huge reviewer….let’s just say you should at least try.
Why would you say that, Allena? There are so many timeline delays involved in just getting a publisher to look at the book, and then when they do publish it, they don’t do much to market it, but your revenues per book as an author will drop dramatically – where’s the tradeoff that makes it worthwhile?
I used to work at a bookstore, the same bookstore my husband works at. There’s a noticeable difference in the size of the actual book section from ten years ago, and I definitely think that the publishing industry is about to go the way of the music industry. I totally support self-publishing
Yup, the economics of print just don’t make sense anymore…
@John: True, most of the publishing world still consider self-publishing to be at the same (low) level as vanity publishing.
@Danny: Thanks for the article. Keep in mind that publishing print books is different from publishing e-books only. For those taking the latter approach, another option is Smashwords.
You mentioned “Get the book laid out, typeset, edited, and proofread…” Unless the book is fiction, it should also have an index. Prospective authors should simply search online for a quality book index service.
That’s a great point, Michael – print is different from e-books, and the fact of the matter is that most sales (particularly for self-published authors) happen in e-book format these days (though there’s still a lot of value to print, for a bunch of reasons).
And good point about the indexing service – very important!
Thanks Danny, good article. Some more links to available help would be an advantage. Also you mention the dollars in your margin section, but no breakdown of costs associated with self-publish v online publish v traditional publish. I think this would be a useful tool to add.
Steven, that’s a great point, and it depends a lot on the choices that you make through the process.
Here’s what I mean; if you’re equipped to do the writing, editing, and cover design yourself, then it won’t cost you anything (literally); you can have you book on Amazon without having paid a penny.
If you want people to start doing that work for you, though, the costs start to rise. Likewise, if you want lots of copies of your book to send to reviewers, it might be expensive (more for the postage than for the books!).
Does that help?
Quite a tough goal for at the moment.. but I know if Ill get along with learning and consistency, soon I should do this. Nice read & inspiration..
Thanks, Melanie – glad I could help.
I have already self-published my novel, “Failing Mr. Fisher.” I decided to take this route because I got tired of the rejection letters or the “no responses.” I had a lot to say about the problems in the public education system and writing the book was quite the catharsis for me.
I did my research and asked a lot of questions when looking at various companies and finally found a company I felt comfortable with. I designed my own cover and am proud of the final results of the product. I would recommend self-publishing to most people as there are many different packages to meet people’s publishing and economic needs. If I decide to write a second book I would do it the same way again!
James, thank you so much for sharing your story with us – your book sounds very interesting (I’m very interested in education, on a personal level), and I think your experience with self-publication adds a lot of value to the other readers here. Thank you!
My problem is alwasy about marketing, and I do not know how to do that, because my skill only on tech…
Hmmm… well, in that case, might I suggest you check out Firepole Marketing?
Thanks Mr. Danny for this article. I needed this information. I’ve some questions.
Does Amazon accept all ebook submissions? Or they first evaluate the book?
Is it necessary to create the ebook in many formats? Or will only the pdf format work?
There are still some parts of this world where there is no internet or even electricity. Don’t you think a hard copy of the book will be useful in those parts?
Syed, thank you for your comment. When you’re doing print-on-demand using CreateSpace, they will accept your book as long as the quality is reasonable – you still have to produce a good book, but if you’ve created something of value, then that shouldn’t be a problem.
You only need a PDF for it to get into Amazon (I think), but I’m not sure about e-books; that depends on which platforms you want it to be available on.
Finally, I have to ask – which parts of the world are you thinking of, and if they have neither internet nor electricity, how will you market your book to them, and will they be able to afford to buy it?
Thanks for the reply.
I live in India. Most of the population here lives in villages. Most of those villages have either no electricity or if they have then only the very wealthy villagers are able to afford a T.V. and their entire colony visits that house to see a movie.
But usually these parts have schools and use hard copy books. Their teachers have to visit the nearby city to buy books and other utilities for the school.
Yes but I agree with you here. I think hardly anyone will buy out-of-syllabus books in those parts.
Also, the schools in these localities are usually not beyond class 10th or 12th. So perhaps the villagers won’t even understand quality books.
Hey Mr. Danny, a question cropped up in my mind later on.
You wrote; “They (CreateSpace and Lulu) will produce a quality printed book that can be bought in major outlets like Amazon.com and your local bookstore (if you request it there)”.
Ok but what if I want them to supply the book throughout the world as international publishers do? Will they be able to do that?
Secondly publishers have good contacts with the market and so the market will easily accept books from the publisher. Don’t you think in case of self publishing some of the bookstores may even refuse to accept and sell, self published books?
Services like Lulu and CreateSpace will make your book available for order by bookstores, but no, the bookstores aren’t likely to stock it unless there is demand.
The thing is, if you’re publishing your own book, you have to do the marketing anyway – so most likely, most of your sales are going to come from online channels like Amazon. Does that help?
Oh yes it helped a lot. Many thanks!
Thank you for the article. I love writing and was at a loss at thinking whether I should peddle my writing to the publishers or even the process. Someone suggested that I publish my writing and I found your article.
I have a long way to go but at least I’m enlightened on the process now and the options that I have.
Thank you.
I’m very glad that I could help, Tini!
I have wrote a book in hungarian language, but the bulk of the content I copied and translated from an american book. Do I need by law to obtain permission from the original publisher/outhor, or can I go ahead and publish my book?
Hi Danny,
I have just written a book and it is in the process of being proof read at the moment. I have never written a book before. However, I already have people wanting to buy it. I have no idea where to start. I thought about buy on demand and also e-books. Any advice you can give me would be appreciated as when I have made enquires beforehand all the companies want money and I want to make sure I go to the right company.