Why Self-Publishing Works (And Why It Doesn’t)

What sort of books do well with self-publishing? Which don’t? And why do we hear success stories of self-publishers making millions? Cate Baum discusses the choices to make when self-publishing.

We’ve all heard the cries. Self-publishing means you keep control over every aspect of your book journey! Self-publish, and never give a cent to the demonic publishing houses! You cannot make money from self-publishing! There are reasons behind everything, and here they are.

Success is relative

There are three types of self-publisher: The hobbyist, the enterprise author, and the serious author. Which one are you?

Hobbyists are basically scrapbookers. They like the idea of writing a book and holding the finished product in their hands. They aren’t really bothered about it looking professional or that the quality isn’t too good, but they like the whole process and being part of a community. This kind of success can be measured in satisfaction of finishing the product, and sharing the project with family and friends, such as a memoir of a life, or a poetry collection. Many “indie authors” are too slick (and mean) to consider this portion of the community as “proper” authors, but they are, because they have self-published a book.

Enterprise Authors are really the most successful of all self-publishers, because they had a purpose for the finished product from the start. Common enterprise authors are those who write a self-help book or guide for their own seminars, to be used by attendees, or maybe a church group or educational project that needs a manual to work on. These sorts of authors are not so worried about look, but do want their book to be a tool in their workplace, and do sell on all outlets, and want to sell. The reason they are successful authors is because every seminar they will sell a copy of the book to each attendee, and over the years, these books have high sales figures, often with the Kindle version bought as well.

The Serious Author is the author that is usually most disappointed by the self-publishing model. This is because they are looking for success and fame, hanging onto the myth that a publisher will scoop them up once they get selling. Expectations are high. Unfortunately, the majority of these authors have not spent long enough on their product in any way, and the result is an unfinished, unstructured work with an unappealing cover and underwhelming promotional effort. These books tend to fail, with only a few copies sold to friends or family.

Failure is likely

Self-publishing will mean you’re doing everything yourself at a professional level. This means you have to decide when your book is ready, edit it, design a cover, format it, and then promote it. At a publishing house, this process starts once the author’s manuscript is accepted, and can take up to two years with at least a dozen professionals involved. Can you really expect to make it, with these odds?

Quality has to be as good as mainstream published books to get sales. Nobody is going to buy your book unless it looks the part. You’re going to have to understand your sales strategy, what genre your book is, and the psychology of color and image for the cover. Can you do that?

You’ll need a huge following in your interest/niche to gain exposure. An email list won’t cut it, because you can only email people once or twice, and then you’re just being annoying.

You need a very serious audience to get books sold to strangers in great numbers. Author of the “Fifty Shades” books E.L. James was part of a huge and obsessive Twilight Fan Fiction forum, when women loved stories about “smart virgins” losing their virginity to elegant alpha males. Her fiction caught on, and she was able to sell to a vast, ready-built crowd that knew her well, and more importantly, were waiting to lap it up, as Twilight was over and they wanted a sequel. Believe it or not, that’s what Fifty Shades was intended to be. Have you got a setup like this? Is your book part of a phenomenon such as Twilight? Are you an active member of a community of readers? If not, read on.

You’re going to have to get out of that chair… because no way is sitting there waiting for stuff to happen gonna work. Even famous and successful authors have to schlep to book festivals and talks, for no money, often. When Karl Ove Knausgård was promoting My Struggle, he would drive for miles to reach a small workshop with eight or ten people attending. Recently I attended a book festival, where one author had driven through snow for four hours, to talk to six of us. So if you think you’re going to post your book on Facebook and get hundreds of sales, think again. Legwork is essential, and not necessarily effective even then.

If you don’t want to get out of the chair…you’ll have to be attached to the chair for at least 15 hours a day. Indie author turned also-published author Amanda Hocking has said she used to drink Red Bull and sit there on forums and social media for up to twenty hours a day promoting her books. She is a very prolific author, and presents her various books to turn readers onto others. Michael Bunker seems strapped in and online nearly all the time, and has hired a book publicist to help. He writes anthologies with other authors to share exposure. He’s also darn prolific. Take a look at his array of books. There are many. He has one of the best email campaigns I ever saw. Sign up and witness the genius.

You’ll have to spend money. Lots of it. We’ve calculated if you want to sell your book to a professional level, and make your money back, you’re looking at spending around $10k before you get anywhere close to professional.

Literary categories on Amazon are punishing

It’s highly unlikely you will sell self-published literary fiction on Amazon and make money. This is mainly to do with BISAC categories and Amazon keywords.

Here are the categories for genre fiction. So long a list I needed to link to it.

From that list, here are the categories for literary fiction:

>General
>Literary

Yeah, sure, you can add keywords to niche it down, get some specificity (well, you can add “romance,” “historical,” or “women’s”, and that to me is just going genre again). But basically, if you have written a really literary book, you are in the pool of all the other literary books, with nowhere else to go. And then you’re up against just about every amazing writer that ever lived in print/digital ink today.

The hard truth is that non-fiction and genre writers are better off because they have more categories to be in. Nowadays though, Romance and Sci Fi are just as flooded as Literary. You really do need professional help with categories for either of these book genres.

Self-publishers get optioned for movies, but…

It’s nothing. There are as many indie producers and filmmakers trying to find story ideas as there are self-published authors. An option can start at a dollar, a small token payment to mean that IF the person interested in your story gets funding for their film, you will let them have dibs, for as long as the agreement says. So when an author boasts that their book got optioned in “Hollywood,” they mean some guy in downtown LA with a home office has PayPal’ed twenty bucks for a try on the story for a few months. It’s not very glamorous.

It is true, however, that producers with real money and funding do read books to see if they are any good for a screenplay. However, they only do this when there’s a ‘hot property’ making the rounds, such as The Shining by Stephen King, which got optioned even before it was published. This is incredibly rare. Look at books made into movies, and you’ll see almost all are published by major houses. Although, because my mother-in-law is a very big Hollywood producer, I do send her indie books sometimes, and she reads screenplays from me, passes them round. You never know. So far, nothing has been “a fit.” It goes without saying unless you have a sweet way in like me, everything must be submitted through an agent and never “unsolicited”. Leading on to the next point…

You usually can’t get an agent with a self-published book

I asked seven top agents who deal with the main publishing houses what their feeling is on representing an already self-published book. The answers were very sure. If you have self-published a book, and it failed to sell, that book is out of the game. Agents don’t like to try and sell self-published books because they sell very little, and show a failure of the author’s work. It is not enticing. However, the good news is that agents like to represent an author, not a book. This means you can write something else new, and forget about the self-published failure from three years back. It won’t impact your chances for the future on getting published. This is the main reason you should not self-publish with the idea you will get a “book deal” for it later on. You won’t. Either self-publish and work at it, or try and get yourself an agent for publishing through a mainstream channel.

Be wary if an “agent” or “publisher” emails you about your self-published book if you have sold very few (i.e. 100,000 copies) as it probably means they’ll be asking you for upfront costs next.

Indie publishing houses are not what they seem

An indie publishing house is a service that is out of the loop of the main publishing industry in New York and London. There are five types of indie publishers. Number 5 is the option you should avoid at all costs:

Very niche or local books, usually non-fiction or poetry, such as books on a specific area or subject, usually operating like a trad house where you get a very small advance or they keep a proportion of your royalties, or both.
A professional “assisted” service to take your book from edit to publish, and you pay for these services upfront, i.e. BookBaby.
An assisted service that takes some of your royalties, to check your files and distribute for you, i.e. Smashwords.
A registered publishing house that has ISBNs of its own, like ours at Kwill Books, which run more like a traditional cycle with promotion included, to get you a boost on Amazon and GoodReads, for example, but you still pay upfront for services, but keep all your royalties.
A company that charges extortionate fees in excess of, I would say, $8,000, produces poor quality finishes, old-fashioned artwork, takes all your rights and pays you royalties from their takings, makes you pay for pulping and other hidden costs, does no real promotion for you, doesn’t understand or offer ebooks, and insists you buy books upfront in bulk. This is the old Vanity model. NOT GOOD. Vanity publishing has become a dirty word because of services like these, but in fact all self-publishing is vanity publishing.

In my opinion, asking for help and getting it for a fee is the same as a mainstream publisher arranging it for you, and then taking it out of your royalties, so it’s really nothing to be ashamed of. And most of those hollering about not paying to play are secretly coming to people like me for services anyway, so take no notice. Do what’s best for your book.

So, should I give up on self-publishing?

No! Many books are very suited to self-publishing, if you have the money, skills, and energy to do it right. But if you think you want to be a famous author with a serious career, it may be best to go to the experts first to make sure your book is headed in the right direction. Agencies like TLC in the UK can also review a manuscript, for a fee, to let you know where you stand. You can also use Beta services, such as ours here, to get a feel for your readers.

Above all else, remember, this is your decision, and your book. Don’t let anyone else decide your route to publication. There’s room for us all!