11/7/2018 0 Comments Self-publishing Pros and ConsHello! My name is Heather Kirchhoff. I am the Young Adult author of Fading and The Last Night. Today I’m wanting to talk about the pros and cons of self-publishing.
For those that don’t know, I am a self-published author. This is my opinion. What are the pros, you might ask? The reason why I chose this path was simply because I wanted to be in charge of everything. It’s great being able to pick your cover, or formatting. To be able to hire the editor you want to work with. To be able to decide your release date. There’s really no limits to this path. You can take as long as you’d like with the entire process. Just make sure you’re doing it right. Don’t rush into publishing. Take your time with writing and editing. Rewrite if you have to. Don’t ignore it if it’s needed. You can also control where you publish the book. You can control if your story gets into bookstores, or libraries. You can control having book signings wherever you want. You can share as much of it as you’d like with excerpts. You also get to decide how many books you send to reviewers. Now the cons… While all of the things I mentioned above are great, there’s also a downside. You’d have to do all of the marketing yourself. It’s on you as the author to make sure the book gets in front of people. There’s all kinds of ways to do that, though. There’s so many marketing websites. You can talk to your local libraries and see about getting a display for however long they decide. You can do giveaways. You can donate to someone else’s giveaway. You can have blogs post your cover reveal or about the book on release day. Just to name a few. Another con is that you have to pay for everything. You can’t edit the book yourself and then just publish it. You shouldn’t create your own cover—unless, of course, you’re a professional cover designer. You need a gorgeous cover on your book in order for it to sell. A lot of readers won’t read a book that has a terrible cover. There’s been so many times that I wanted to read a book based off of the cover alone. I had no idea what the story was about, but I bought it anyway. That should be your goal. But you also need to make sure the storyline isn’t terrible, or that it’s obvious you didn’t hire someone to look over your work. You think someone is going to keep reading even though the grammar is bad? Or the fact that there’s random words in weird places? Or when sentences cut off for no reason? No. They will put the book down. That’s why it’s important to hire a professional editor. Publishing a book isn’t cheap, but it’s definitely necessary if you’re wanting to become a full-time author. Or have success in any way. Plus, you more likely don’t have a team in the beginning. It may take a while to find the right people to work with as well. It took me a few tries before I found my cover designer. You just have to keep going. Don’t give up on your dream. Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it! I post every Wednesday. My debut novel is about a girl struggling to cope after a love one dies. It deals with depression, suicide and bullying. You can check out The Last Night here! Feel free to check me out on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. I’d love to interact with you!
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About Me:Hello! My name is Heather Kirchhoff. I am a Young Adult author. I want to give out writing advice and help other authors avoid the mistakes I made. I post twice a month for now. Archives
April 2020
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