The advantages of self publishing

I thought that this would be a good moment to do you a nice chart of the advantages and disadvantages of DIY... But, as the question of capital is the only disadvantage I can think of (and admittedly this is a large question), such an unbalanced chart would have wasted a lot of valuable space. So, let's think about some of the advantages. They come in no particular order. Speed: I made the decision to go it alone at the end of May (with nothing but the manuscript on disk) and, on 16th August, I had the first books in my hand. Compare that to traditional publishers! Control: things happen how and when you want them to - rather than at the whims of your publishers (for example: you're wildly busy with something else, the corrected manuscript arrives and they want it checked and back to them within 48 hours). When you're in charge, things happen when you decide they will happen. Saving paper: (this may seem petty, but to me it's very important). There was only ever one hard copy of the manuscript of EASY BEING - which the copy editor used. Otherwise we simply worked from disk (with several copies) - which is also much easier to handle, and cheaper to post. I've done some sums for you... Faster access to your money: okay, so you get an advance from traditional publishers - supposedly one third on signature of the contract, one third on submission of the manuscript, and the rest on publication; and this is not to be sneezed at, if it's a worthwhile advance. (However, they may have the manuscript, and simply delay signing the contract so they don't have to pay.) The rest of your royalties will sit with your publishers from four to ten months - earning interest for them, rather than you. For example a Statement of Accounts 31st September to 31st March comes to you (with luck) with payment by 31st July. They may also hang on to 20% of your Royalties for two years - supposedly to cover any losses. A much larger slice of other rights: A publisher will generally go for '50% of net receipts'. For example, the Swedish publishers of both my books pay an advance of royalties of £1,700. For LAZY LEARNING, the publishers' agent took 10%, leaving £1,530, and the publishers took 50% of that, leaving me with £765 (which they hung onto for as long as they could - see above). Whereas the £1,700 for EASY BEING comes straight to me. (You can always employ your own agent to handle specific rights, and this will cost you 10%-20%, depending on whether or not your agent goes through another agent in the country concerned.) There are all sorts of other little clauses in publishers' contracts, which don't mean much at the time: like, if they sell books at a 50% discount, your royalty percentage goes down, and if we work this one through, based on a cost of £2 per book to the publishers, and a retail price of £8.99: Wholesale price: £5.84 50% Discount price £4.50 Less your royalty of 15% - £0.88 Less your your reduced royalty of 10% - £0.45 Leaves them with £4.96 Leaves them with £4.05 Less cost per book - £2.00 Less cost per books - £2.00 Sub total £2.96 Sub total £2.05 Less carriage per book (say) - £1.00 Less carriage per book (say) - £1.00 Their profit per book £1.96 Their profit per book £1.05 So, they are always making more than twice as much profit as you on the first print run. A much higher profit on reprints: as you discovered above, a run-on of 1,000 copies will cost the publishers 70p per book, ie it increases their profit by £1.30 per book; so they are now getting £3.26 per book, while you are still getting 88p - in four to ten months' time - ie they're making almost four times as much as you, and faster than you. You are working one-to-one, with people you know, who are becoming friends :- rather than playing Chinese whispers with a collection of faceless individuals. This, for me, is the most important aspect of the whole exercise. With LAZY LEARNING, I would tell whoever I was dealing with at the publishers that something needed changing; the information would be passed down the line to someone, get mangled on the way, and something else would get changed instead. It drove me mad!