Why I Self-Publish: One Writer’s Journey

I finished my second book back in 2003 (the first one I relegated to the slush pile after a year of fruitless querying) and started the querying process to hopefully find an agent. After more rejections than I could count, I was ready to throw in the towel on this one, too. And then I read an ad in a writer’s magazine about a small press that was accepting direct submissions, no agent required. I figured, why not? So I submitted the book and in about three weeks got a letter back that not only were they interested, but they wanted to make a movie out of it. Naturally, I was ecstatic. I called my brother, who was at the time a successful screenwriter, and he said to forward the contract to him so his lawyer could look at it. So I did, and that’s where my elation ended. The lawyer said they were wanting me to sign over all rights to the book, leaving me with nothing. It was his advice not to sign the contract.

To say the least, I was dejected. I didn’t have the stomach for more rejections, so I put the book aside and started another one. When it was finished in 2005, instead of shopping it to agents, I decided to publish it myself. Now at that time there were no ebooks (Amazon didn’t sell its first Kindle until 2007), so the only option was print. I checked a few vanity publishers but their upfront costs were crazy. I was a single mother with a family; I didn’t have $5000 laying around to publish my book, and then have to find a place to sell those copies. Then I found CreateSpace and print-on-demand. No upfront costs, no schlepping my books to booksellers. I have a background in corporate publishing, so I used Adobe Frontpage (the predecessor to InDesign) to format the book and converted it to Acrobat and uploaded it to CreateSpace, and voila! I had a published book.

Naturally, the marketing aspect was even harder then. Without social media, all I had was a website and newsletter and magazine ads to try to sell it. At this time I was working full time as a copyeditor and running my own design business on the side, so it took me a few years to get around to writing my next book. By that time we had Kindle and other ebook outlets like Smashwords, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble, so I had multiple outlets on which to publish. I once again formatted the print and epub files (in InDesign now) and submitted them. The process itself was quick and painless, and it still is to this day, although now I use MS Word and KindleCreate. Not perfect, but quick and easy, and if your files are well-formatted to begin with, very professional looking.

Which brings me to why I do it. When I submitted my second book to agents, the ones who didn’t reject it outright wanted me to change this or that about it (and all of them wanted a different this or that changed). I started questioning the value of my work. I pulled the book apart and tried rewriting it to their specifications, but it lost all its cohesiveness and I finally gave up on it. I knew what I had to begin with was a good product. The idea was original, the writing was strong, it was well-edited; heck, a publisher even wanted to make a movie out of it (nefarious though they may have been). I made up my mind that I was not going to let someone who barely skimmed my book tell me what was good and not good about it to fit their sales algorithm. I wanted creative control over what I had worked so hard on for months. So for me, self-publishing was the answer.

I know there’s a lot of stigma against indie authors–they must not be good enough to attract an agent or traditional publishing house–and for some this is certainly the case. I have only to peruse most of the stuff I see on Kindle Vella to back up that opinion. And there are a lot of poorly-written, poorly-edited books available for sale because it is so easy to publish now. But many writers, like myself, do it for the following reasons: creative control, timely publishing schedules, and retaining more of the royalties on sales. For instance, for traditionally-published authors, they get paid pennies per sale once or twice a year AFTER they pay back any advance they got. I get paid monthly, and the percentage is in dollars, not cents, even with Amazon’s less than generous residuals.

I used to publish on multiple outlets, but with the advent of KindleCreate and the ability to create an ebook file without going through either InDesign or Calibre, I’ve switched to publishing exclusively on Amazon. It’s not perfect, but it streamlines the process for me and I have all my books in one place. When I analyzed my sales from the other outlets, I wasn’t losing much by switching, and I’m eligible for KDP Select, meaning Kindle Unlimited.

The thing is, if you’re a writer considering going the self-publishing route, you have to make doubly sure your book is clean. Go over it with a fine tooth comb, weeding out any typos or grammatical errors, then use a good editor to get it into shape, and if you’re not proficient at formatting it, use someone for that, too, because once it’s out there, it’s your reputation that will be on the line. One bad book and people will likely never risk buying another one.

Now for the downside to self-publishing–marketing. Yes, all writers have to market themselves, even traditionally published writers. But you’re kind of out there on your own as an independent, and it takes a lot of time and effort to establish a brand to translate into sales. Even so, I wouldn’t change it. As I said, I love having creative control over what I write, and I find that independently-written books offer more variety than traditionally published books because we’re not held to a publisher’s sales algorithm. Yes, you have to wade through some bad apples to get to the good stuff, but I’ve found the same thing with traditionally published books as well.

And by the way, that second book that I tore apart? I finally put it back together the way it was originally written and will be releasing it this spring.