To self publish or not to self publish – that is the question

Considering your answers from earlier lessons you will be able to appreciate what matters to you when you think about the success of your book and how you will achieve that.

Now we need to look at the pros and cons of self-publishing and help you decide if it's right for you.

ACTION; Here are some questions to answer to help you decide;

  • Do you feel confident with design?
  • Do you feel confident with editing or will you pay for this to be done?
  • Do you feel confident in proof reading or will you outsource this?
  • Do you enjoy/like IT and printing so that you can master how to publish my book?
  • Do you know what you need to understand to print my book?
  • Are you good at tech?
  • Do you feel you will be able to create a professional look for your book?
  • Do you feel you can promote your book effectively (this is going to be VITAL for your book whether you self-publish or work with a publisher.)
  • Is having ultimate control over the content, layout and number of chapters important to you?

ACTION: By looking at these questions and taking the time to answer them it will help you work out whether self-publishing is your best option or whether you should invest in working out how to get a publisher to fall in love with you to take a lot of these aspects away from your workload.

For instance, my book was edited in the first instance by an in-house editor, that would send each chapter back to me so that I was in effect writing 2 chapters at any one time. This could happen sometimes 3 to 5 times as we developed the idea, layout and design of the book.

(Remember I still had a full-time job at the time, so it was a lot of work. However I love writing and so it was no hardship for me, and obviously, as a coach, I knew how to put things in place to ensure I stayed motivated and enjoyed the whole process as I achieved my writing goals.)

I do think it's imperative you ask yourself "Do I love writing?"

Next my book was outsourced to another editor and then it was edited by myself and the first editor and their team of editors in their online platform that restricted what could be altered. This meant that if I had new ideas or additional thoughts that I wanted to include I could not. Self-publishing means you can alter that as often as you like.

Please remember it's not just a case of publishing a book and selling it. I know people that have self-published and been very disappointed with the look of the book, and as such it's not sold well, risked damaging their brand and not achieved its goal for them. They've then put the manuscript forward to publishers who have reinvented the book and its achieved international recognition and a lot of book sales.

I also know authors that have failed at self-publishing and used a third option. This option means that budding authors choose to utilise the skills of a company that helps people get their books published. They tend to have a number of options;

  1. Give us your raw material and we will do everything - there tends to be a large upfront fee and they take a %.
  2. They host courses to help you learn everything you need to write the book, you write the book and then they take over - a (smaller) fee and they take a %.
  3. They take you pre-book and train you in the skills you need to be able to create the book and promote it yourself. (A lot of which we cover in this course.)

Using the third option they do have the advantage that they have helped others to become best selling authors and as such it could help you fast-track your results for your book and your ultimate goal. They also have fabulous contacts in the industry and so in effect, they are doing a lot of the work we are talking about in this course for you. (I'm very happy to recommend a company to you if you feel this is the best course of action for you.)

It is important to remember that there are billions of books in the world and not all reach the pinnacle of success they deserve.

All genres are saturated markets and it's important that if you choose to self-publish you understand your reason why you wish to write the book and how you will promote it successfully. If you are in doubt self-publishing could be very tough for you. 

A personal note, I was going to get my first book published by a publishing house and I'd had a number of replies from publishers who said that they loved it however it didn't fit into their plans for that year. Or that it was too business focused for them to be able to accept it (Including Louise Hay Foundation who then gave me a list of publishers to speak to and they advised if I wrote a less business focused book they'd love to hear from me!) Handing me a list of publishing houses to get in touch with is not the norm, so I knew I was on to a good thing!

As despondent as I felt, an international best selling author told me that to get personalised replies meant I was good at writing and I should keep going, it was just a case of putting it in front of the right publishers at the right time. It was in 2013 that this happened and because I had only just come back to work after a year and half of not working due to my Lupus I decided to self-publish because ultimately I wanted the content available for business women at The Business Womans Network immediately.

This was also the right choice for me because I had altered my business goals to work with a wider audience and as such my first book is not something I greatly promote because it is for The BWN predominantly and the additional sales I get are just an added bonus as I help business women be more focused, more successful, selling more with confidence. So can you see that it is critically important you understand why you wish to publish your book? Knowing your reasons for publishing a book is imperative at every step of your book writing journey.

ACTION; Look at the answers to the questions above and decide if you have positive or negative answers. This will help you decide if you should self-publish. Compare this to the lesson that looks at what a publisher will want from you and look at what gaps you have. How will you bridge these gaps?

  • What do you need to learn?
  • What do you need to believe?
  • How are your beliefs impacting on your ability to be successful at this?
  • What needs to change?
  • How will you ensure you change?
  • Who will you lean on (Include me and the Insiders in that one!)

When I trained as a coach many years ago I used to suck at marketing (I won't lie to you, ever) when I trained as a coach I thought "I can coach, but I can't market, so I'm screwed!" It wasn't true. I'm completely self taught and I will teach you everything you need to learn and I absolutely believe anyone can become good at powerful communication, exceptional confidence and self belief and great sales to create a profitable successful business.

 

 

 

Complete and Continue