Self-Publishing

Self-publishing: a way to get into the publishing world with the reins in your hands. It was once a not-so-popular option, but with the technology of the 21st century and the many resources available for hiring professionals and receiving more information on publishing, it has become significantly easier. This is helpful because there are a lot of steps. Luckily, you can go through all of them at your own pace in just about any order.

The first step is to write the draft of your book; you’ll see the draft referred to as a manuscript. As a writer myself I can tell you it’s not an easy or quick step. But once you're done and content with your draft, go on to the next step: editing. You could do all the editing yourself, hire an editor to do it all for you or possibly help you out, or even ask a friend to do the work (which I have done before and although not the best/most professional option, it's free!). You can do a combination of these options, though hiring an editor is the most costly.

But publishing isn’t just about the book itself: you need a title and book cover. With the creative control of self-publishing, you could take care of this step anytime you like, or it may be drawn up suddenly when inspiration strikes. The title is mostly up to you, but the art of the cover can be created by a professional; you can hire a graphic designer to do the work for you. Like hiring an editor, rates may vary.

Now is the actual—and possibly the scariest—step. Publishing. Luckily there are loads of publishing websites you can use, like Amazon, Apple Books, and Google Books, all of which make publishing easy. Though the steps to publish vary from resource to resource, the main steps are to make an account, put in your book information, set a price for how much the book costs, and enter it into your “shelves”. The publishing website will print the pages themselves, but mostly sell it as an ebook. 

After having your book up onto the publishing website, next comes the advertising of your novel. Marketing can be free with social media, which is a great resource, but the work and advertisements on platforms like TikTok and Instagram will be mostly up to you. These platforms have a few options within them. You can make a picture post, video post, upload to your feed or story, or even buy advertisements/sponsored items. Which brings me to the other, not free options: buying a physical advertisement like a billboard, having advertisements on websites, buying your own website (which is a great idea to have as a writer in general), or hiring someone to help/do the work for you, like managing your social media pages. 

Now you can sit back and relax a little: you’ve done most of the hard work. But you will need to keep up the marketing of your book to reach more people and continue making sales. It's not over yet: let me fill you in on some more tips! You can sign up with a self-publishing company that will keep you in line, and give you all the resources you need to accomplish publishing by yourself. You should read about what to be aware of in the self-publishing industry, like scams. One website that specializes in this field is Writer Beware (see what they did there?), where volunteers work to warn and spread information on such scams. You should also copyright your book and buy an ISBN number so you can sell your book. These two are their own separate topics with a lot of information available.

Self-publishing sounds easy and unrestrained because of how much is under your control. But, as I hinted before, there can be a lot of money involved. The cost ranges based on what you want or need. You may have someone draw up the cover for your book or you may have done it yourself. You may have one, two, or no editors, each one with varying rates based on what type of editing they’re doing. And you could be doing your marketing all through posting about it on social media, which doesn’t cost a dime, or use all of the marketing options. And copyrighting your book and getting an ISBN number will be more on the costly side. Because there are so many options and courses of action there is no one set budget but it can go well over $10,000. It's guaranteed not to be $0 unless you are super talented.

Both sides of publishing, traditional and self, have their pros and cons. 

After reading this post on self-publishing, it may not be the route for you and that’s okay. But it can be worth it, may be easier, and possibly give you more sales than if you did it traditionally. Either way, it can be a hard task where you may face ups and downs. So, best of luck, fellow writer, on your publishing endeavors!

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About the author: Emily Ruggiero is a senior English Major with a Creative Writing Concentration and a mathematics minor at Arcadia University. She plans on getting her Master's in Creative Writing at Arcadia. She is on the women's lacrosse team there too, and has played lacrosse for 10 years. Emily would like to be an author after college. She mostly writes sci-fi, fantasy, speculative, and horror, but dabbles in poetry.