Being a writer is amazing. You get to tackle any subject you want, write whatever story you want, and the only limit is your imagination. However, when you finish your novel things get more complicated, even stressful.
Writing a novel takes a lot of work, but it’s the easiest part of publishing. When you finish your manuscript, you need to figure out how you want to publish it: traditional or self-publishing. With traditional publishing, the publisher handles all of the heavy lifting (editing your manuscript, designing your book cover, obtaining ISBNs and barcodes, and promoting your book) at a high cost to you and for subpar royalties (50% or less). With self-publishing, you do all the heavy lifting, but you could see royalties as high as 70%, or even 100%. Traditional publishing, if you can afford it, offers you convenience but you don’t have full control of your book, whereas with self-publishing you have full control. Depending on your preferences, one is better than the other.
I decided to go down the self-publishing route, even though I wanted to do traditional publishing for a long time. Part of the reason was that I was curious and wanted to see what it would be like to self-publish. The main reason was that I couldn’t afford traditional publishing. In Ottawa, there aren’t much publishers to choose from, and the ones that I know about expect you to spend thousands of dollars for their services. Obviously, I couldn’t afford that, so self-publishing was my only option.
The notion of bypassing traditional publishers and reaching readers directly is fantastic, but there are huge caveats;
1) It is nearly impossible to receive grants if you self-publish. The Canada Council for the Arts has a list of activities that disqualify you from receiving their grants, and self-publishing is on that list. The Ontario Arts Council do have a grant for self-publishers, but your self-published book has to sell at least 400 copies and be more than 16000 words.
2) Receiving prestigious awards with big payouts is also nearly impossible. To qualify for the Governor General’s Literary Award, your book must be submitted by an “eligible publisher,” which likely doesn’t include Amazon or Kobo. The Ottawa Book Awards has more leeway, but if your book is only in ebook form then you don’t qualify. Though if you’re on Amazon KDP you can easily make a hardcover version of your ebook.
3) Getting your book properly edited is a struggle. If you’re like me, you probably don’t have money to afford an editor. Unless your friend, relative, or significant other is a professional editor, you and you alone are responsible for editing your book. For my book The Invasion of Planet Earth, I had to reread the manuscript around 6 times to spot all of my errors. Thankfully it was a short novel, but if it were over 150 pages, then the editing process would be a long slog. If you’re not good at spotting your own errors, then your book will be a wild-west of spelling mistakes and formatting errors.
4) Marketing your book is a tough challenge. Unless you can afford your own marketing team, promoting your book will be an uphill battle. Many companies today promote their products through TV commercials, posters, ads on websites, and radio ads. If your marketing budget is $0, then these options aren’t feasible. There are options out there where you can promote your book by spending little to no money, but these will require a lot of effort on your part.
It’s hard being a self-publisher. Most grants and awards appeal only to traditionally published authors, and having a low budget significantly limits the marketing and editing potential of your book. However, I’m still willing to go down that direction. I’ve learned quite a bit when publishing my first title; ISBNs are easy and free to acquire, an organization known as the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) legally require Canadian authors to submit their work to them in order to “preserve the country’s published heritage,” and online publishing sites like Amazon and Kobo offer great benefits to self-publishers and provide an outlet for them to share their work. If I still waited until I saved enough money for traditional publishing, I never would’ve learned all of this. I’m very excited about where this journey will take me next.
Comments