This Is A Guest Author Post
They say everyone has a book inside them, but in the past getting your own book into a state where you could market and sell it was a long process that involved a lot of luck. While many writers still prefer doing things this way because of the prestige associated with having a but released by major publishers, it is now possible for anybody to publish a book they have written and, with the right marketing, get it seen by their target audience who will hopefully buy, read and enjoy it.
Here we take a look at how self publishing using things like Amazon has changed the way we think about writing and selling books of all kinds, from bestselling novels to niche reference and educational books.
How Traditional Book Publishing Works
Following the previously accepted path to getting a book to market, getting a book published would involve pitching the idea to agents, one of whom would hopefully pick up the project and sell it to a publishing house. It would take a lot of commitment to even reach the stage of getting a proposal seen by agents, and particularly in the case of non fiction books, sometimes a good idea would be rejected because it had very niche appeal and the publishers wouldn’t be convinced they’d be able to sell enough copies to justify making it.
For fiction writers, often the book itself would be in a completed form before the author would try to get it published, whereas for non fiction the idea would often be proposed before the book itself was written, and upon a publishing deal being secured, the writer would have to finish it in time for strict editing deadlines. Once the book was published, the writer would have a certain responsibility for marketing the book, though the publishers would also make some effort to promote it (how much depending on the breadth of appeal the concept had and what else they had coming out).
Why Self Publishing Changes Everything
Self publishing has always existed to some degree, but where in the pre Web 2.0 age you would have had to spend a lot of money on financing your own print runs and would then have had to find places to sell you books, with things like the iBook store and Kindle you can publish a book in digital formats without having to spend any money at all up front (aside from any you might spend on design or editing). Through some services, you can also offer your book as a print copy, and this is essentially printed on demand and sent to the person who has ordered it, meaning you don’t end up with any unsold copies, and the cost of printing the book is included in its purchase price.
This means that in principle, even if you have literally no money you can write and release a book that people can buy. If you are writing it for non profit purposes, you can even make the digital copies free so as many people as possible will read it. As long as you stick within the rules of the self publishing service you’ve chosen, you don’t need anybody’s approval or for the idea to be deemed good enough by an agent or publisher.
While self published books are, because of all of this, abundant and therefore it can be hard to have a hit (particularly with the most popular fiction genres), even some major bestsellers like Fifty Shades of Grey started out as self published titles. We’ve all heard the story of how J K Rowling was turned down by countless publishers before getting Harry Potter released – who knows, if this had been a viable option when she finished the first novel, even that could have started in this way!
Featured images:
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
Today’s guest author, Jenny Wadlow, is a freelance blogger who works for Garratt Publishing. She is an avid reader and is a regular face at the local public library. She most thoroughly enjoys reading various educational books.
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