Should You Self-Publish Your First Book?

As a new author, I'm working toward what I'll become. I'm also going to hazard two guesses:

1) You're at a similar stage in your writing journey.

2) You have stories or a novel you want to publish.

If that's the case, we might have a connection... are you free Thursday night? 

No, here's the real question: Should you publish your first book?

If you're looking for immediate attention and approval, stick to social media. If you simply want to make money, know that the cryptocurrency market is pretty hot right now. However, if you find joy in writing, practice your craft, and possess a sense of humor (please), I hope you'll find a way to publish.

Okay, but should you self-publish your first book?

Many writers approach this question from a self-publishing vs. traditional publishing standpoint. A valid comparison, but treating self-publishing as an all-or-nothing decision is unimaginative, to say the least.

Let's examine the extremes before tackling what this question could mean for you (if you'd like a less extreme overview of each route, then check out the additional sections at the end).

In the right-hand corner, we have the self-publishing evangelist:

“My God, I'll get 70% royalties on my book sales if it's self-published. Why should I let a publishing house sink its teeth into my guaranteed bestseller? Traditional publishing eats up the profits, while still expecting me to do most of the work. There's a 7-step formula for becoming a self-publishing success: cut out the middleman and profit directly from your readership. Traditional publishing is dead. Dead with a capital D, I tell you!”

On the other side of the ring, we have the traditional publishing devotee:

“My first book must be a literary masterpiece. Otherwise, my author name shall be forever tarnished. Any uneducated yokel can self-publish a book, and self-published books aren't even eligible for the PingleBanger award. A lucrative publishing deal may not await me at journey's end, but complaining about countless rejections while desperately seeking approval will make me a better writer. The publisher will tell me when I am good enough!”

Neither one of these contenders sounds fun. The self-publishing evangelist is unrealistic and hyper-focused on sales. The traditional publishing devotee is bitter and fixated on merit. I'd only listen to them to get a better idea of what not to become.

Thankfully, you don't need to get a face tattoo or swear a blood oath to try either route.

So, should you self-publish your first book?

God as a Magic 8 ball would tell you, “Reply hazy try again.” I'll add to that by saying it depends on your project and your goals.

First, here are three reasons you should not self-publish your first book:

1) You need your first book to be traditionally published. Most publishers and agents are not interested in submissions that have already been self-published. While there's a chance your self-published book could be traditionally published after you make a name for yourself, don't take that chance if you believe that first book must define your career. Personally, I think pinning all your hopes on one book is limited (hopefully, you'll write more than one), but it's understandable if you've spent years working toward your ultimate manuscript (I have a book I'd like to take along the traditional route when it's ready, but I don't feel a need for it to be my first).

2) You're worried about your book's reputation. No one is going to reject your self-published book: there are no gatekeepers. Your book is going to rub shoulders with a bunch of turds that have been polished to varying degrees, and many people will assume your book was not good enough to be traditionally published. Fair enough. However, I wouldn't worry about self-publishing doing irreparable harm to your reputation as an author. Self-publishing shouldn't be a badge of shame; rather, it can demonstrate you're able to complete a project and find readers.

3) You don't want to do “all that not-writing stuff.” If writing is an art, then publishing is a business. You still won't be entirely free from the business end if you're traditionally published (you've got to format your manuscript after all, and most publishers need some convincing that you can build an audience/promote your book), but you'll be less involved in that realm than you would be with self-publishing.

Still with me? Good, I'll pick you up Thursday night at 8. Also, here are three reasons you may want to self-publish. I ended up self-publishing my first book (Eight Hurricane Maria Stories from Puerto Rico), so I'll speak more from personal experience here:

1) Your topic is time-sensitive. The stories in my book revolve around a recent event (Hurricane Maria blasting Puerto Rico back to the Stone Age). Trying the traditional publishing route would've taken a lot longer, and there would be no guarantee my book would see the light of day. This opportunity sort of fell in my lap; our part of Puerto Rico had no electricity for 66 days after the hurricane, so I had more time than usual for writing. It's a short book, but it felt complete.

2) You need momentum. The common route toward getting traditionally published struck me as depressing. I'd had a couple of unpaid acceptances, which were somewhat exciting, but I wasn't submitting regularly. This process felt like applying for internship after internship in the hope of one day landing a dream job that someone else had already defined for me. Also, romanticizing rejections doesn't appeal to me (I'm not going to frame some form letter that has “Nice try, chap. Try using fewer adverbs next time.” penciled in at the bottom). Couple that lack of enthusiasm with procrastination, and I wasn't making a lot of day-to-day progress in what I claimed I wanted to do. I wanted to experiment, connect directly with readers, and see actual results. Self-publishing also forced me to keep moving. Once I put my book out there, I had to act or watch my creation die.

3) You want to learn about “all that not-writing stuff” that makes a manuscript a book. I was curious about the process of getting a book out there, from designing the cover to approaching bookstores. I set out to do this with a budget of $0.00 (the only money I spent on furthering the book's reach was what I made from selling it). I'm a cheapskate by nature (and the island-wide blackout wasn't helping my bank account), but it's also easy to lose money before your book sells a single copy if you stray from self-publishing into vanity publishing. If you're paying someone to take most of the work out of your hands, you're only learning new ways to waste your money. I'm happy with the skills I developed along the way and see them as useful tools to support my writing.

If you've come this far, you must really be thinking about self-publishing your first book. You should know that one of three things could happen once you release your work out into the wild:

1) Your self-published book is an embarrassment. It's such a total flop that even your mom hates it. Your writing career is over before it even started. Man, you suck.

2) Your book does okay (the average self-published book only sells several hundred copies in its lifetime, so “okay” is a broad term here). It's not a bestseller, but it found its way to more people than just your friends and family.

3) Your book becomes a bestseller – no, not a bestseller, but THE bestseller. Traditional publishers are there if you want them. Plus, Spielberg and Scorsese have challenged each other to a bare-knuckle boxing match over the movie rights to your book.

Outcome 1 is unlikely. Self-publishing shouldn't be an excuse for not putting enough time and effort into your first book, but maybe you just fucked up. Delete it. Yup, you heard me right. You brought that bad boy into this world, and you're going to be the one take him out of it. If you become the next Ernest Hemingway or Agatha Christie, any surviving copies of your failed experiment will serve as inspiration for aspiring writers everywhere. The only case I can think of where you might have some long-term difficulty is if your book was so bad that it became popular: person after person bought your book to laugh and feel better about themselves. You might want to find another calling in that case, but if you decide to keep writing, you can always use a pen name for the next book.

Outcome 3 has happened once in a blue moon, but don't count on it. If it does, then congratulations. Don't forget me when you're all the way up there!

Your book is probably going to find a home somewhere in the middle: outcome 2. Maybe it finds 347 or 7,083 readers. Either way, that's more readers than it would've found if it just sat in a computer file or didn't cross the traditional publishing finish line. I think that's amazing. I believe in the power of stories, but all that is lost in empty space without readers.

If you're along for the ride, I'll be using this part of my site to cover the not-writing stuff of self-publishing while expanding on some ideas mentioned here. Thanks for reading, and those basic publishing route overviews that I mentioned at the beginning are below.

Traditional Publishing

If your work gets traditionally published, you'll have the weight of a publishing house behind you. The publisher believes your work will sell (to a certain extent). You'll receive an advance (a signing bonus that's paid against your future royalties), and they'll print at least a few thousand copies of your book. In some sense, you'll have made it as an author (your first book still needs to find readers, and the fate of your next book is not certain). Before all that happens though, you'll need to find an agent (or know how to negotiate a book deal if you manage to attract the attention of a publisher on your own). If your book is non-fiction, you'll definitely need a professional book proposal. You'll need to deal with rejection along the way. If your more promising prospects ultimately fail to deliver, you'll need to pick up the process with someone else.

That's a lot of ifs, but they're not necessarily evil. You must be a dedicated writer to get published this way, and you'll likely take your work to the next level. If you're an unknown author, this could be an especially daunting task. Having smaller publishing credits under your belt (journals, writing contests, etc.) could help your chances, but the publisher is still taking a gamble on you.

Self-Publishing

With self-publishing there are almost no barriers to getting published, and that's intimidating in its own right. There's not a high standard of quality for self-published books. Self-publishing your book is simple, but convincing others of its quality is not. For example, you could create an alternate version of the Bible where God gets replaced by a Magic 8 Ball and call it a book (don't though, since that's the idea for my next book called Outlook Not So Good). Even worse, you could pour your heart and soul into your book and put it out there only to find that its Amazon ranking is far below that of Outlook Not So Good.

Yes, there are higher royalties in self-publishing, but you're on your own when it comes to finding readers. Unless you want to pay for design, editing, and formatting services (there are companies that will be happy to charge you), you're also on your own with making your book look professional. You'll need more than the art of writing to convince others that your book is worth reading.