Pros and Cons of Book Publishing

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Publishing a book always has its highs and lows. Whether you want to take the traditional route of publishing or choose to self-publish, a better understanding of how the world of publishing works can help you decide which publishing route best fits your goals.

TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING:
Going the traditional way works well for a person with an established status or a huge following, say a celebrity or a TV-radio personality. The moment a traditional publisher says yes to your book, you no longer have control over it.

Traditional publishing does everything for your book – from editing, layout, to printing down to marketing. This may be a good thing, but a downside to it is that you don’t have creative control of your book. You may find that your already-edited manuscript has but strayed from your original work.

Traditional publishing pays you to get your book out. You will get an advance, although it may be modest for a first-time author. They determine how many books to print and your book makes it to the bookstore. However, if it doesn’t sell in 30 days, the publishing house will forget you. Putting out another book with them may take a lot of convincing for them as well. And yes, your books will be returned to you, too.

Unless you get a good lawyer to arrange ownership rights to your book once it gets shelved, you waive your rights away. In terms of royalties, traditional publishing houses now pay only 10% at most of wholesale. (they used to pay royalties at 10% of retail.)

SELF-PUBLISHING:
A downside of self-publishing is that you have to pay to get your book published. Depending on the package, you may have to pay a budget-savvy or a whoppingly high amount to publish your book with them. However, if you pick the right self-publishing company, they will give you a favorable return on your investment.

A great thing about self-publishing is that you get full creative control of your book – from the editing, cover art to marketing. You retain ownership rights to your book as well – after all, it is you who wrote your book.

Your book gets worldwide online distribution through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, etc. Marketing and Distribution are perhaps the biggest blocks of self-publishing. Only very few distributors are willing to deal with self-published authors.

This implies that getting your book to land in bookstores can be tough. This is because self-published books are non-returnable, unless you push for an aggressive book marketing campaign. So does getting your book evaluated by established book review institutions. Another good thing about self-publishing is that you don’t have to worry about inventory or a pile of unsold books collecting dust in your garage.

But perhaps the best thing about self-publishing is that there is no one else to convince about publishing a book but yourself.

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