Brandon J. O'Brien

I’ve never self-published a book, so my observations are not from firsthand personal experience. Even so, when writers ask me what I think, here’s what I tell them:

Self-publishing has some advantages:

1. (Potential) Profitability.

There are some who would tell you self-publishing is absolutely more profitable. This is because publishing houses appear to be giving smaller advances for book contracts these days. Publishers are taking fewer risks, which means paying authors less up front. Additionally, when you self-publish you don’t share as much profit with third parties. The royalties for my two books is somewhere between 16 and 18% per copy. Self-publishing royalty rates may be as high as 70%.

Now, I say self-publishing is potentially more profitable for one simple reason: self-publishing may earn you more money per copy, but it does not guarantee you will sell more copies. Personally, I would rather sell more books for less money than to sell fewer books for more money. But if you knew you’d sell the same number of copies either way, you’d likely make more money self-publishing.

2. Speed.

Publishing a book is a long process. The Strategically Small Church took about 18months from signing the contract to the release date; Misreading Scripture will come in at just under 2 years. A lot happens in that time, including writing. But half of that time or more is used by publishers for reviewing, revising, designing, typesetting, marketing, etc.

By contrast, if I had a manuscript prepared for self-publishing, I could have it up and ready for sale on Amazon nearly overnight.

3. Control.

When a writer lands a book deal, you gain the support of a book publisher. But you lose a level of creative control over the project. The publisher will have strong opinions about everything from the length of the book, its price, binding size, paper type, font, design, down to vocabulary, paragraph length, etc. And once the book is published, you can’t make changes until the next edition comes out—and unless you sell a lot of books, there probably won’t be a next edition.

With self-publishing, the author has all the control. The author makes every decision the publisher would ordinarily make—about book length, price, size, font, design…you get the idea. And if you want to make changes to the manuscript, you can release a new edition whenever you want. Or you can make an abridged version. Or a picture-book version. Whatever you want.

Of course with this control comes a lot of responsibility. I would never publish a book unedited. So I would want to find someone to edit my manuscript. And I would have to pay them for that. I’m not a designer, so I’d need to hire one of those, too. I don’t know much about profit margins, etc., so I’d have to research a good price for my book. And so on. If you’re willing to do all this work, and have the funds up front to pay for it, then self-publishing might be a good option.

4. Flexibility. Publishers are risk averse. So once publishers—and perhaps more important, audiences—know you as a great nonfiction writer, it might be hard for you to get a contract to write a novel. Or a travelogue. Or a cookbook. Or whatever. (Unless you’re famous; then you can write whatever you want.) Self-publishing gives you the flexibility to write in a variety of genres and avoid being pigeonholed as a writer of a certain type of literature.

Here are the conditions under which I would consider self-publishing:

1) To write fiction. I dream of publishing novels or a collection of short stories someday. One idea I have is for a children’s novel about gnomes. Yes, it’s hard for me to imagine a publisher snatching that one up. So let’s say I wanted to write this novel for my son, I might just do it and publish it myself.

2) I’m wildly successful already. If I ever become the sort of writer whose books sell simply because they have my name on them, then I might consider self-publishing. By then I’d be able to afford the upfront costs, presumably, and would know my way around the business a little better.

3) My talented friends volunteer to take care of the typesetting, design, cover art, etc.

And now, because there’s a baby crying in the other room and I’m on duty, I’ll stop here. I’ll talk about some advantages of traditional publishing in the next post. Meanwhile, I’d love to hear your thoughts about the advantages or disadvantages of self-publishing. Maybe I’ve got it all wrong.