Self Publishing Today

Let me guess - you’ve almost completed your manuscript and are thinking about how to get it published.  You’ve heard how hard it is to get noticed by a mainstream publisher so you’ve decided to self-publish.

My first advice is - hold your horses.  If you haven’t written “the end” yet, you are (or should be) at least six months from publication, because you have several steps still to complete:

1. Finish the manuscript (that may be harder than you think!)
2. Research your publishing options carefully - self-publishing may sound like the easy option but it’s not, and could even handicap your future writing career.
3. Edit.  If you can’t get editing help from impartial critics (friends and family don’t count, they’re too kind), put the manuscript aside for six months.  The only way you can truly see the flaws in your own work is to get some distance.   Yes, I know it sounds like a long time - but what’s six months compared to producing a book that can make your name immortal?
4. Prepare the manuscript for publication - formatting, cover design and blurb etc.
5. Publish.
6. Promote, promote, promote, promote, promote, promote, promote….because no one except your family will know the book exists, unless you tell them.  You will need to spend hours, days and weeks marketing yourself and your work in order to make sales.  And be realistic - most self-published books sell less than 100 copies.

You may be surprised to hear that for most fiction writers, I recommend holding out for a mainstream publisher rather than self-publishing.  A self-published book simply cannot reach as wide an audience as a mainstream one, and many an author has been left crushed and disillusioned by their self-publishing experience.  That said, provided you go into it with your eyes open, with a great book and a marketing plan, you could be one of the exceptions.

And that’s the purpose of this blog - to inform you of the perils and pitfalls and ensure you understand the amount of time and effort that will be required of you, to make your publishing journey a success.

Good luck!

Marisa

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