Your Ghostwriter Online

Should I Self-Publish My Book?

By T.R. Locke on May 20th, 2011

Should I self-publish my book? Here are some thoughts.

So you want to write a book? You have a great idea that has been begging to get out of you. Maybe you’re a professional–a doctor with a new technique for treating patients and you want to generate attention to help people around the world. Perhaps you’re a lawyer who specializes in a certain type of law that is hard to explain and you want your clients to understand what you do and why you are their best choice.  You could be a real estate agent with a great new method for investing in properties during this downturn and you want to get the word out. You may be a pastor of a church with a passion to share what you teach to your congregation with the world. Or maybe you’ve just been thinking about a story idea that would sell like I-phones and you want to cash in like Apple.  Deciding to write a book can be a great step towards achieving all those goals.

But what if no publisher is interested? Getting your book published in today’s competitive market is difficult. Many publishers take the shortcut of only working with famous people–previous authors with proven sales records, celebrities with large fan bases, speakers, and businessmen and women with huge mailing lists to market to. If you are not one of these people, you may find rejection letters from publishers piling up for weeks, months, or years to come no matter how good your idea is.

But that does not mean you will not be able to realize your dream of getting your book published. Today there are many self-publishing avenues available for you to take advantage of. And with some of them offering distribution as well, the difference between being self-published and being published traditionally is negligible. In addition, if the information you have to share with the world is timely or needs to be out on the market quickly, self-publishing may well be your only way to go considering the average traditionally published book takes one and a half to two years to hit the market after the book is written.

The main consideration you should make in deciding whether to self-publish your book or not is whether you have the funds you need to do so. Self-publishing your book means you are responsible for the costs. Generally speaking, the actual publishing fees to self-publish your book can run from $1,500 for bare-boned basic publishing with fairly generic covers, moderate editing, etc., up to $50,000 for complete thorough editing, ghostwriting, international distribution, PR–including book videos, press releases, high-quality cover design,  media interview coaching, etc.  High-quality professional ghostwriting will cost you $100 per page or more. That means that a 200-page book will cost you $20,000 to have ghostwritten for you, but a good ghostwriter is worth his weight in gold. That’s why publishing houses pay ghostwriters $100,000 per book or more–they know they will get their return on investment. A good ghostwriter will guide you through the self-publishing maze and make sure you only buy the services you need.  But more importantly, he or she will make sure the content of your book not only tells the story you want to tell but tells that story well.

The greatest benefit of self-publishing your book is that you will keep 100% of your rights, 100% of your royalties, and 100% control of the content of your book. So if your book idea is as good as the Chicken Soup for the Soul book and spins off into 100 other products selling more than 108 million copies, you won’t make less than $1 per book (as Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hanson did), you can make the $10 per book their publisher made.

Finally, self-publishing has changed over the years. It used to be that self-publishing meant a garage full of books you had to sell. With the new Print-on-Demand technology, and national distribution through retailers like Amazon, your book can be printed and shipped as needed. And when it appears online, it will look like every other book from any other national publisher. No more boxes of books crowding your home or office. “Should you self-publish your book?” The question should be, “What are you waiting for?”  Click this sentence and fill out the form that follows or call to contact me, today. 

Comments are closed.