Self publishing

B
ECOMING A PUBLISHER
in your own right is a
legitimate way of getting published. If your book
is an autobiography, poetry or short stories then
you have practically no other option anyway. You
don’t need to know about typesetting, cover
design or printing – just employ one of the many
firms who specialise in providing these services
for authors who want to get into print. When
the books are delivered to you they belong to you,
so all the income from sales is yours to keep.
Don’t expect to make money from printing
your own book. You might get back some
of your investment, but it isn’t possible to
make a real profit from a short print run
(less than a thousand copies) of a book.
Selling more than a thousand is possible
and I’ve seen plenty of self published
writers do so, but it takes dedication to
achieve it.
Self publishing can be a step towards getting a
major publishing deal. Some editors prefer to see
a bound book because it helps them to visualise
what their edition could look like, or they might
like your impressive sales figures. Others,
however, might be put off by the fact that your
book has already appeared in the shops and may
be concerned that you’ve tapped the market for
yourself and there’s nothing left.
There’s a new trend amongst the bigger
publishing houses towards looking at self
published books in the hope of finding a gem
that they can take on. A Year in the Merde by
Stephen Clarke and The Sea on Our Left by Shally
Hunt are both examples of self published books
that became bestsellers when taken on by larger
publishing companies.
Vanity publishing
This is when authors pay a publisher to take on
their book. The vanity publisher makes a profit
out of the author and therefore doesn’t need to
sell any copies of the book to make a living. Any
copies they actually print belong to them, not the
author, so if the author wants stock to sell to
friends and family they have to pay for it (again).