What is self-publishing?
Self publishing is when you, the writer, independently publish your book – without a traditional or hybrid publisher.
- You have complete control over editing, cover design, typesetting, price, distribution, and marketing
- You will need to pay for all the upfront costs: printing (if you’re printing copies), design and formatting (if you’re going digital), hiring a cover designer, hiring editors (structural and copyediting), and purchasing your ISBN
- You will need to upload your books to retail platforms and deal with any technical issues that arise
- all the royalties you earn are yours alone, with the exception of retail platforms like Amazon, iBooks, Kobo and Barnes and Noble who will take a cut of the cover price for hosting or publishing your book on their platform
- You skip the process of submitting to agents and/or publishers
- You can work fast: you could finish edits and have your book ready to go that same hour
- You’ll have to do all your own marketing and publicity, and it may be difficult to get your physical book into bookstores
Publishing services and distributors
These services and distributors are not publishers, but they can assist to convert your book into an ebook format (ePub, Mobi or PDF) and distribute it to online booksellers.
They are easy to use and cost effective. They can be used to publish both ebooks and print-on-demand (POD), which means to print books to order. The writer receives royalties, minus the cut from the service or distributor.
Examples of publishing services include:
- Green Hill Publishing
- Ingram Spark
Printing services
Another way to self publish is to create a print-ready file (or pay someone to do it for you) and send it to a printer. This means going for a print run—receiving a predetermined number of copies—instead of print-on-demand. This is more expensive and risky, since you will have paid for the books without the guarantee that they can be sold.
Examples of printing services include:
What is a vanity publisher?
Vanity publishers charge authors for publishing books, often way over and above the actual cost of printing. They make their money out of the process, whether you sell one or ten thousand copies.
Vanity publishers use many different names to describe themselves: joint venture publishing, cooperative publishing, subsidy publishing, share responsibility publishing, hybrid publishing, equity publishing, publishing services, and partnership publishing. Some misleadingly use the phrase self publishing.
This is different from paying a commercial printer for a print run of your books. A commercial printer will quote you a price per book. Vanity publishers can often be scams and many of those businesses are not recommended by the Australian Society of Authors (ASA). The fees can be exorbitant and you may be required to either order excessive quantities of your book, or be charged extremely high rates to purchase copies, or required to purchase a sizable quantity of books.
Self publishing can be intimidating. It involves many processes: editing, cover design, typesetting, printing, marketing and distribution. Vanity publishers may do some, or all, or this work. But you bankroll the entire process.
However, in today’s rapidly changing market, there are many situations where a shared cost publishing arrangement can work well for both publishers and authors. Always do your research, obtain a contract and understand what you are getting (and what you are not). Be clear on what you need to do and what the vanity publisher will do for you. If you can’t understand every clause or the legal wording is baffling, make sure you seek legal advice.
Further information
Writers SA has a number of information sheets and resources available to Members, including on Self-Publishing, Vanity Publishing, and Editing.
You can find these via the following link (you will need to log in to your Member account):
