My Choice to Self-Publish

When it comes to actually publishing what we've written, there is a new choice that must be made by all writers: to go the traditional route with publishing or to self-publish. I say new but, to be honest, it's not a particularly new idea. Writers have been self publishing since, well, people started putting pen to paper. But the difference is now it's a viable option.

Let me give you a breakdown of the state of publishing in 2012. With the advent of e-books, publishing a novel or short story is easier than ever. If you can write a story, you can publish. Whether or not you can sell is a different matter and depends on a lot of factors.

If you choose to go the indie route, the pros are:

• you will make a much greater percentage of the profits (35-70%)
•  you have greater creative control 
• you don't have to wait around for the supposed gate-keepers of the industry to accept you. 

Now for the cons to self-publishing:

• you are responsible for everything (editing, cover design, formatting, promoting, writing the blurb...everything!)
• there is the stigma of being self published working against you. You can't get into bookstores, it can be hard to find professionals to review your work, and some readers refuse to read books that are self-published.

What if you want to go with traditional publishing? Well, the pros are:

• you can actually get into bookstores 
• the pride and prestige of being accepted by the industry gate-keepers (something that, frankly is worth less and less with each Stephanie Meyer and E.L. James that comes along) 
• not having to do all the work yourself so that you can spend more time actually writing. 

As for the cons with traditional publishing:

• you make a measly amount of the profits (10-15%) 
• apparently it's common practice to not give authors any data about the amount of sales made so that they don't even know how much they should be earning
• the enormous amout of time spent waiting. It takes years to find an agent, then years to get a publisher, than possibily another year to actually get published.
• you don't have control over things like titles, covers, blurbs and, sometimes, even content.

Solid arguments can be made for both routes, but what it really comes down to is what the writer wants. Traditional publishing offers prestige while self-publishing offers money. Personally, prestige means little to me and I've already achieved a life goal by being an author, so traditional publishing hasn't got much to offer me at the moment. Since self-publishing is where the money's at, that's the way I'm going.