Self Publishing vs. Traditional Publishing: Part IV - The Pros of Self Publishing
So, I’ve mentioned the pros and the cons of traditional publishing, and put up a quick introduction to self-publishing. Here are the self-publishing pros…
— You control the content. Basically, you have total control over the poems you publish. You can use poems that have been published previously, you can edit and change them in any way you wish, order them how you like and lay them out according to your own plan. No one takes the red pen to them but you. You also retain 100% of all the rights, which is an important issue to a lot of people.
— You control the design. Something else many people find important is the aesthetic side of things — as I already mentioned, many publishers have a “house style,” which limits the extent to which you can experiment with your cover design. Some publishers’ contracts contain a clause preventing the poet from making any contribution to the book’s aesthetic qualities — and that doesn’t just mean the cover, it means the layout, typeface, everything. With self-publishing you control all of this, and if you want to, you can try several options. Making mock-up covers is costly for publishing companies, so normally once you say yes to something, that’s it. But if you self-publish, you can try one option and change it if you don’t like it… just as long as you’re OK to pay for it!
— You control the distribution. If you publish on a POD basis you can choose to buy all the books yourself and then distribute them under your own steam, rather than through a third-party website. Yes, if you buy in bulk you have to pay all the costs, but you can also decide what you want to charge without having to give a percentage to an online vendor every time a book sells. On the other hand, you can stick with your POD company’s distribution programme, which generally means that the buyer pays for the cost of printing instead of you.
You can also self-publish by hand-making your own books — an increasingly popular option — which means you have total control over distribution and pricing, too. Overall, you can decide which bookstores your book appears in — you can negotiate with book sellers, rather than having a distribution plan handed to you by a publisher.
— You can potentially make more money. Because most poetry publishers offer little-to-no advance on your work, if you want to make any money at all out of your book (remember! This should NOT be your main objective when publishing poetry!!), you need to do all the leg-work to make it sell. If you’re going to be doing this anyway, then self-publishing may actually offer you a better deal. Most publishers print your books up for you and give you some for free. The number of free books you get varies hugely from publisher to publisher — the lowest figure I’ve seen so far is six (though I am sure some publishers offer none at all), while for my own forthcoming book I’ll get 50, and I reckon some presses may even offer more. These free books are for you to sell, and keep 100% of the money, while the rest of the print-run is for the publisher to sell. You can buy some of these books back from the publisher at a discount (again, this varies — the lowest I’ve seen is a measly 7% off), but obviously with self-published work you get to keep 100% of anything you make from selling books face-to-face. OK, you may have bought these off the POD company, but in some cases you can buy your POD book for only the amount it cost to print… say, £2. Sell it for a fiver and you make £3 profit. Buy your £12 book from your publisher at a 10% discount and… well, since you’ll be limited to selling it for £12, you do the maths.
— You’re forging into new territory. It’s still considered unusual for a “good” poet to self-publish… people assume there’s something wrong with your work, you’re not good enough or that you don’t have the confidence to look for a publisher. These popular misconceptions can seem unnerving, but the more decent poets who self-publish, the more quickly these preconceptions will disappear (as they absolutely should), and the easier it will be for self-published poets to be judged on the quality of their work, rather than the publishing method they choose.
— You control your PR, and therefore, you have the potential to reach more people with your work. Publishers generally have a distribution plan and a marketing scheme at the ready when your book comes out, and getting them to deviate from that plan is pretty darned tricky in many cases. OK, so if you have a self-published book rather than a more conventional one, it’s more tricky for you to get reviewed by big publications. However, you can send your books out to whoever you like for review without having to ask for anyone’s permission. You can end up with reviews from bloggers all over the world, with hundreds of links coming back to your POD store front or — if you’re willing to pay for it! — to your Amazon store. All you have to do is put in the legwork and find the people out there — which gets easier with every day that passes thanks to the internet — who want to read and praise your work. It’s hard, but is it harder than gigging your butt off or being at a publisher’s beck and call? Up to you to decide.
— You have a great topic of debate to hand. Self-publishing will ALWAYS be a bone of contention for some people in the literary world (SIGH), so if you’re lost for words at a poetry reading, slip the topic into conversation. It’ll probably make people remember you if nothing else.
Next: Part V - The Cons of Self-Publishing.
I WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU! Have you self-published anything, or are you planning to? Tell me about it! claire@onenightstanzas.com, or the comments box will do.
Don’t forget to visit the One Night Stanzas store!
Tags: advice for young writers, publishing, resources for young writers, the pros of self publishing, young poets
December 24th, 2008 at 8:59 am
excellent list. i self published a pamphlet of poetry a while back, i wanted the money to go to charity and there was no way I wanted to go through the whol trying to find a publisher thing. The printing process went really well, i sold all my books within a reasonable time scale (certainly quicker than a local publisher is rumoured to sell the same number of books) and made a nice sum of momeny for the charity. Plus i had a nice launch event attended by people who wouldn’t normally go to poetry readings. I would definitely recommend self pubilshing for anyone wanting to do a charity related publication. I still think though that there’s a way to go before it becomes acceptable, its like ‘being a performance poet’ or ‘posting poetry to your blog’ its seen as not quite the done thing by the ‘literary poets’.
January 8th, 2009 at 9:34 am
I really liked this article, it was very useful. I’ve never published anything but I do plan on making a poetry book for my friend, does that count?
Although, I’ve considered publishing it and selling it within my highschool to raise money for my fundraising project (which is to build orphanages around the world).
January 8th, 2009 at 11:25 am
Juliet — the charity issue is a really good point. I might make mention of that at a later stage in the series, thanks!
Mercedes — Really glad to have helped. I reckon making a book of poems for someone else does definitely count as self-publishing, and I hope it all works out well! If you do plan on distributing it more widely and you want any advice just drop me a line to claire@onenightstanzas.com :) Good luck with it!
January 12th, 2009 at 10:10 am
[...] literary project. But it can be anything… write an article or letter to the local paper, self-publish something, set up a blog… or, again, write a guest post for ONS! Publishing something — no matter [...]
January 21st, 2009 at 9:59 am
[...] II — The Cons of Traditional Publication Part III — The Road to Traditional Publication Part IV — The Pros of Self Publication Part V — The Cons of Self Publication This is becoming quite a series! I hope it’s been [...]