Should You Self Publish Your Book?

Only you can answer that question. There are hundreds of reasons to self publish your book. Likewise there are hundreds of reasons NOT to self publish your book.

I self publish, and people always are asking me if I recommend it to others, and you know what? They get shocked when I don’t! Why? Well, for me, self publishing works, because I write in a very tiny niche, for which there is almost zero interest and is next to impossible to find a publisher for, simply because my niche is “not marketable enough”. I write chap-books (too long for a short story, too short to be a novel), short story anthologies, plays, and niched non-fiction. So, for me it works because the sales market is so small, that I’m able to personally market to pretty much every one interested in the niche. It is pointless for me to even attempt to traditionally publish my stuff, because there simply is not enough demand to warrant it being mass produced.

However, if I was going to write something that would cover a wide audience, I’d send it out to traditional publishers, because they are better equipped to reach the mass market.

Of course the other thing is, I don’t as a general rule write novels either. There is a huge world of difference from self-pubbing and small niche non-fiction book, and a mass market fiction novel. Self-pubbing fiction is very hard to do and not recommended (by me) to anyone seeking a wide readership.

As a general rule, self publish only if you are writing one of the following:

a short story anthology
a book of poems
a technically journal (which will only be read by a 100 or so college professors)
a non-fiction niche market (alien abductions interviews; sky-diving how tos; etc.)
a local history book or local travel guide
a play
a memoir
a church/business/family cookbook

The reason for sticking only with these types of books, is because these are not going to sell many copies to begin with, thus traditional publishers won’t bother wasting their time on them. They’ll sell 10 to 100 copies per year at best, even with a traditional publisher’s best marketing team promoting it, and because of this, they are best suited to small press or self publishing instead.

So, if your book does not fall into one of those categories, than avoid self publishing it.

I do recommend, however, that you self publish a book, before you go on to anything else. It doesn’t have to be anything much, maybe just a 30 page book of poems that only hand out to your cousins at the next family reunion, and try to sell a few copies of off of your MySpace page. The reason I recommend this, is, because it gives you a first hand “feel” of the actual publishing process and will help you to better understand the inner workings of what a publisher does to get your book, typeset, printed, and marketed. (Don’t “test run” your book you plan to traditionally publish, however, because once you’ve self published it, traditional publishing houses won’t republish it. It is very hard to convince them that they should REPRINT your book, if you didn’t sell thousands of copies within the first few weeks of it’s self published run!) Think of this “first book” as a test run learning exercise, and not as a book that will make you rich and famous.

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

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