5 Pros and 5 Cons for Self-Publishing your Book

By georgelthomas on 26 Apr 2022 • ( 3 )

Hi everyone I hope you’re all well. Today I’m going to talk about some of the pros and cons of self-publishing your work.

As a writer, you spend so much time, energy and hard work writing and even when you’re finished, you’re not really finished. Next comes the editing and revisions and more editing and even more revisions, and it really is a relief when you’re finally done. But after all of that, what’s next?

Well, for many writers the end goal is having their work published. You may consider sending your work out to agents or submitting it directly to publishing houses in the hope that you might be one of the lucky few to be chosen for representation, or, you could do what more and more writers are doing these days and go the self-publishing route.

To help you decide if self-publishing might be for you:

Here are 5 pros and 5 cons of Self Publishing your Book

The Pros

1 You Have Total Creative Control
If you self-publish, all of the creative decisions about your work are yours alone. Nobody can tell you something doesn’t work or that you need to change things or phrase things a certain way. It is your work and you get to decide exactly how it’s presented to your readers.

2 Your Earnings are Yours
Any money you make from sales of your book is yours. There won’t be anyone taking a cut of your proceeds.

3 There’s No Waiting
When you self-publish, you create your own release schedule. You decide when your book launches. With traditional publishing, you are beholden to the schedules of publishing houses, and sometimes it can take a year or more before your book is even available to buy. By self-publishing, you can publish immediately, or set a date and market and publicise your release as you see fit.

4 You Retain your Rights
With traditional publishing, depending on your contract (which you should always, always read), you may find that you have to share the rights to your work or there may be certain dos and don’ts or stipulations that you might be obliged to adhere to. With self-publishing, you maintain control of all the rights to your work until or unless you sell or licence them.

5 It’s Easier to Change Things
It is so much easier to make any sort of change to your book if you are self-publishing. A traditional publishing house will want to oversee every aspect of your work, and once the final version has been submitted and accepted, it may be very difficult to make any changes. If you’re the one who’s in control, then you get to make any change you like at any point in the process.

The Cons

1 You Have to Take Care of the Editing
With traditional publishing, generally speaking, as the writer your job is just to write. An in house editor will work with you to help get your book ready. By self-publishing, the hard work of editing your book is on you and only you. Unless of course, you can afford to hire an editor or two.

2 You Have to Take Care of the Marketing
A traditional publisher will come up with and implement a marketing strategy on your behalf. Self-publishers have to find a way to market themselves and their work on their own.

3 There’s Less Visibility
A traditional publishing house wants to make money from your book, so they will market it, get into bookshops and under the noses of potential readers. With self-publishing, you have to take care of publicising your book yourself. If you don’t get it out there, nobody will see it.

4 It is hard to get into Bookstores
As a self-published author, you will find it extremely difficult to get bookstores to stock your book. Most of their stock comes from traditional publishing where they’ve been able to secure exclusive deals.

5 There’s no guarantee you’ll Make any Money
When you self-publish there are no advances, and, in fact, it can be very hard to make any money at all. Any money you do make will come from royalties from the sales of your book, which means readers will need to buy it. If nobody buys it, you won’t make any money.

As always, thanks so much for spending some of your time with me today, I really appreciate it.

Until next time,

George