Deciding To Self-Pub

Any writing forum, Discord group, or other social media space for authors inevitably has a few gatekeepers hanging around, telling everyone else who is a “real” author and who isn’t. One of these folks’ favorite gates to keep is the one that says, “In order to be taken seriously, you have to be traditionally published. If you self-published you’re a fake.”

There is a lingering perception in the publishing world that self-pubbed authors “couldn’t make it” at getting trad-pubbed. That the only reason you would self-pub is if your book is bad and trad pub isn’t an option because it keeps getting rejected by agents due to being bad.

And let’s be real, maybe your book IS bad. But that’s not the only reason agents feel they can’t sell a manuscript, and therefore your book is not worth their time.

In reality, you may have a great book on your hands and it will never be trad-pubbed because you are writing in the wrong genre (it’s not a currently hot one like Romantasy), or you are not writing an MC who is the same race and gender as yourself (not authentic enough), or you simply don’t know anyone who can give you a leg-up, nor are you a celebrity with a memoir guaranteed to sell.

Some aspiring writers want to be traditionally published, and start out with that goal, but after several rejections, or maybe a hundred, they begin to ask themselves – when do I give up on this path and self-publish instead? Should I self-publish?

I think the question to ask yourself in that situation is: what is most important to you? Seeing your book in print, or seeing it accepted to a trad publishing house? If the former, perhaps set a time limit on the manuscript getting accepted. If it doesn’t get accepted within two years you’ll self-pub, after a certain number of rejections you’ll self-pub, etc. 

Besides the perceived prestige of getting trad published, some people also think that self-publishing means your book will not look professional, due to the myriad ones online that have covers thrown together in Canva and blurbs full of spelling mistakes. Just because plenty of self-published books on Amazon look amateurish doesn’t mean yours has to, if you go that route. There are excellent formatting resources, editors, cover designers, etc. that you can hire to make your self-pubbed book look just as good as any trad-pubbed title. And either way, you will need to market the book yourself, so there is no difference in that respect.

Also, this is not common, but keep in mind that self-pubbed books which do well (aka selling tens of thousands of copies) sometimes get picked up by trad publishing houses. This is especially true if the genre they write in suddenly becomes “hot” – see my mention of Romantasy earlier.

The point is, even though there’s a ton of trash out there, which I think we all know, self-pub is not the last refuge of those who weren’t good enough for trad pub. There are many other factors to consider.