You Want to Self Publish!

Self-publishing has many upsides - you get total control of your work, you get total control of the profits, and you get total control of the timeline. Publishing houses are no guarantee of sales or bookstore placement or large expenditure of marketing dollars.

The downside to self-publishing is that… you have to control everything! Printing, marketing, sales and distribution, product shipping, business and finance tasks, warehousing. Working with a publishing house takes a lot of those things off your plate.

I would, honestly, recommend that you Kickstarter Fund anything you’re self-publishing. EVEN IF you have all the money to publish yourself, Kickstarter is invaluable in giving you an invested audience right out of the gate. That audience will become the foundation of your marketing and sales. The more people who are excited about your book from the outset, the more likely the book is to sell beyond your immediate friends and family.

At the end of the day, you have to decide what you want to do based on your ultimate goal. Do you just want your family to have a copy of this book? Or do you want to be a NYT best-seller? Guide your publishing strategy from there! And good luck!