Hypothetical question for my Nostr plebs.
Let's say you wrote a great book, would you rather traditionally publish (get it in big chain books stores, marketers and editors hired to help you, less final control) or self publish (complete control, market and edit yourself, lives mostly on Amazon and online)?
Unfortunately you can't do both, if you self publish the book traditional publishers won't allow you to also publish with them.
Be your own author-publisher. #Value4value
That's the side I've leaned on a bit more in the past, however, if your primary goal is to reach as many people as possible, there is a good argument to be made for getting it into as many places as possible.
Sure. For achieving that primary goal then, you need a first level of big connections with a huge follows, that can help you spread your works. Probably it would need more time them going on a different route, but if/when they train of your idea would start to flow on the right rails and gaining inertia, it will become unstoppable. Wish you the best 🍀
Thanks for the positive wishes! I have a bit of an aversion to the purely audience capture route, I'd rather invest more time to my craft and create the best final work possible.
With that said, I don't think there is going to be any way around doing at least some of the connection gathering.
you read Gigi's book? I think he did both , I don't know about compensation tho.
I published through a traditional publishing house and I’ll be honest… it’s been a long, tedious, and frustrating journey. I still don’t have my publishing date and I basically did my own edits because the ones I paid for weren’t satisfactory… but the finished product looks professional and will be sold in stores and online (mega pro).
Looked into self-publishing a children’s book I’ve been working on and idk if I like it any better. The quality that comes from self publishing just feels mediocre in comparison to the traditional means of publishing. Plus, there is so much added work on the backend if you don’t give Amazon rights to your work. I think I’m gonna publish my second work with another publishing house instead of doing it myself or with the company I used previously.
Ultimately, it all depends on what your expectations are for the finished product.
Thank you so much for the great answer! (zapped ❤️⚡)
I'm asking because I went the self publishing route for my first book and I'm curious about the process for the second. I actually got an extremely high quality final product that is indistinguishable from a traditionally published one, but I had to pay a good chunk of $$$ to make that happen between editors and cover designers.
The timeline thing is big. I don't want to be waiting for years for my story to get out into the world. On top of that, I've heard that sentiment from others that even through trad publishing they still had to do all of their own marketing/editing.
Ofc! Thank you🫶🏽😊
Its just a big pro and cons list. Do you have any company’s you’re thinking of working with?
It’d be a dream to have a book published by Swan’s publishing house (haven’t done any research to see how yet) but I’m also looking into Jai publishing house, they have pretty interesting packages.
No specific company right now. I'm just wrapping up the first draft of the current book, I'd estimate something like a year out until I'm close to ready to publish, but the story is awesome and I'm making good headway.
I did Amazon in the past so I could get on their KDP platform. It was great as it made it more accessibly to people, but I don't know that it's actually worth it because of the lack of control that you mentioned before.
Indie publishing is great for speed and control. Either way, the marketing for a new author is going to be largely up to the author. If Kickstarter is your jam, many have used it to help with the upfront costs of indie publishing.
I suspected this community is all about speed and control ⚡😉
I appreciate the response, the kickstarter is something that I hadn't given consideration before. Though the financial burden is something that I'm certainly concerned about, my primary goal with all writing is just to get it into the hands of as many readers as possible more than making me money.
Others have mentioned the control aspect, but that ended up being a big reason I was very glad to have self-published my dark fantasy series.
In the last book in the series, I wrote something in an unconventional way. My editor said if she was the publisher, she’d make me change it. While I very much respected her judgement, I decided that in the last book in my series, with readers having come so far with me already and no next book in the series, I would rather take the risk to give them something special, than play it safe.
At that point, I was especially glad to have self-published.
Love that example, that was a concern of mine too. The ending of my first novel was a bit controversial, and if I'm doing things right, all subsequent books will continue to be a bit divisive 🙃
Purely based on my love of unadulterated freedom, I suspect that I'll continue to go with the self publishing route in the future.
I would sell my damn book in sentences for zaps on Nostr
