Pros of Self-Publishing Pt.1

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What Self-Publish Can Do For You

Now that we had the chance to explain what self-publishing is, you may ask yourself “Is this for me?” or “Should I do it?” To make your decision process easier, we want to tell you all about the endless pros of choosing self-publishing. We don’t want you to be confused with the many things we plan to talk about, so we’ll be covering this topic again soon.

1- Creative Control and Rights to the Book

When an author chooses to publish a book through traditional, big publishing companies, he or she has to give up some part of the creative process. The author signs over the right to the book during part of the publishing process. These usually affect the cover design, the title, the blurb of description, and sometimes, even the marketplace.

When you choose to self-publish a book, the rights to it will be… well, yours. 100% of the rights, 100% of the time. You can usually keep the rights for future adaptations, such as movies, tv shows, and others.

Even though some authors may prefer not to get involved in these issues, they should have at least the right to give their opinion on everything that relates to the book (even if it is not their “area of expertise”). After all, the author is the person who knows the book the most and who the work belongs to, so he or she should be the one to make the final decision in everything that relates to the book.

This does not mean that authors have to rely on their own expertise to make all these difficult decisions. They can have people helping them make an INFORMED decision, but not necessarily making the decision for them. Always remember: full ownership of your work is positive and that does not mean you have to do everything by yourself!

2- Higher/Better Royalty Rates

You probably have heard about royalty rates at some point in your life. You may even have an idea of what it is about, but if not, please do not stress. Royalty rates are VERY important to authors, so we believe everyone deserves a clear and simple definition of what it is.

Royalty rates are the amount a publisher pays to an author for the rights to publish a book. They are usually calculated as part of the book sales. In a practical situation, if author A publishes a book and sells 2,000 copies, his/her royalty rates would be a percentage of the 2,000 copies that were sold.

So, in traditional publishing, about 10%-15% of royalty fees go to the author of the book, and authors usually get paid once or twice a year. The remaining fees are split between the many people who were involved in the publishing process (read: editors, designs, marketers, etc.). On the other hand, self-publishing lets you keep more than 70% of the rates and that’s because self-published authors pay publishing teams upfront, not based on their royalty checks. So, everything authors make after publishing the book is rightfully theirs.

3- A Selected Publishing Team

In self-publishing authors can CHOOSE who they are going to work with. What happens in traditional publishing is that authors are usually ASSIGNED someone or a team, so they do not have a say on who they work with.

We all know that working with other people can be very hard. The bigger the team, the more complex it gets. Conflicts of interest, different opinions, and different personalities can lead to a lot of tension, so imagine if you could hand-pick everyone on your team? Self-publishing lets you do that.

4- No Deadlines = Less Stress

Authors get a lot of pressure from pretty much everywhere and that is a fact! When you add harsh deadlines to the mix, the result is even more stressful. When working with a publishing house, authors have strict deadlines (that are directly linked to their contracts). This adds a whole new layer of stress for authors because guess what… life is unpredictable.

Have you ever thought that you could finish something in a day and it ended up taking the whole week? Maybe something happened and you could not finish the task on time, maybe the task proved itself to be way more time-consuming or harder than you thought. Who knows?

For me, it has everything to do with that saying: “Life is what happens while you are making other plans.” You can plan, plan, and plan (which, mind me, is something positive) but you can never predict and control all aspects of life.

Now, imagine putting all your thoughts into a paper, finding the rhythm for a story, blocking out negative comments, and just trying to bring your ideas to life. Yeah, it is a lot… That is another reason why self-publishing is so good for authors! They can set deadlines and adjust timelines according to their wishes and can work around dates if something unexpected happens.