Seriously, why do all these people who have never written a book, never approached publishing, and have no special insight into the mainstream publishing world suddenly think they’re experts about what I should be doing with my work?
Seriously, why do all these people who have never written a book, never approached publishing, and have no special insight into the mainstream publishing world suddenly think they’re experts about what I should be doing with my work?
There are several parts to “self-publishing” – printing, editorial review, and marketing.
The printing part is really quite efficient and handy for small runs. But coming up with that print ready PDF to submit to the print queue for the book printer is another story. I did it myself – but with print runs between 2 and 10 copies, it wasn’t too disappointing to find all the typos and other mistakes. I just chose a copy to markup for the next edition.
The “self-publish” printers I evaluated also offered “self-publishing services” – which is the editorial review and marketing. The people who bought these services had a lot of complaints – to the point that it seems like the full-service “self publishing” offerings are the scam. 🙂
The marketing services are also quite lackluster from what I read by those who bought them – probably because the company has nothing at stake other than a disappointed customer. A traditional publisher is highly motivated to sell a book once they invested in it.
But the on-demand printing is as slick as a whistle, and I highly recommend it for small runs or on-demand applications.
One step further – I’ve been getting spam from outfits (with “ghostwriter” in the name) wanting to *write* the book for me, as well as edit, market, and print. All for the low, low price of …
There is a place in publishing for paid editorial services and ghostwriters. It’s the sports biography business. These books will easily sell enough copies to pay the ghostwriter and editor(s). A family member worked for a publisher and, as part of her duties, got to see the raw transcripts of athlete interviews. Those are unpublishable, and painful for a transcriber to listen to or wade through. Often, it takes multiple editorial passes to turn it into a book. But if you sell 100,000 copies, many hardcover, it pays for the pain.
Then there are tell-all Hollywood books, and tell nothing political biographies. I’ve turned enough pages to fill my desire.
Yeah, the vanity press scam is real, and any ambitious and unethical person can enter the field. Thanks for alerting your readers who may want to get published.
Self publishing can be AMAZING, but just like with everything, it has its drawbacks, the big one being you have to pay for EVERYTHING – cover artist, editor, marketing, printing, etc. And that gets EXPENSIVE. I choose to self publish because that’s the route I wanted to take, but I won’t pretend that it’s the “better” option. Each side has their pros and cons and you have to decide as a writer which one you want to do, based on those pros and cons.
And unfortunately, both sides have scams… it’s the nature of business unfortunately.