This post will be the last of the writing process posts in a while, you may call it the season finale of this series. It will be back, soon, dealing with much more specific parts of the process.
So now that you have got a manuscript that is in it’s best condition, What do you do with it? You publish it of course, if you want that is.
So there are two ways of publishing your book:- self publication and publishing using a publishing house.
So, first, we talk about self publication. There are countless ways to do it, you can directly contact a printing press and invest in your book being published, you could self publish yourself using sites like amazon or you could get it published using partial publishing house.
So what are the advantages of self publishing?
-You earn all the profits
-You have the control over how your book looks
-your book will get published no matter how shitty it is
-You are the sole owner of its copyrites
Disadvantages
-You also take all the costs
-you will have to advertise it yourself
-You might have to design its cover yourself as well
-It will get published no matter how shitty it is.
-You are the only one liable for the book.
While you can get published with a publishing house. Which can be big and small.
The big publishing house will make your life extremely easy once you have your book published, they will give you a larger loyalty rate, they will advertise for you, it will help you settle all the lawsuits and will give its brand name as a seal of approval over your book which may help sell your book.
But it is very difficult to be published by a bigger publishing firm. You will have to either already be an established author or an author with an agent. Now agents are another story altogether, something I might explore later. They do sometimes accept novice authors though, they only do that when they know that their books will sell according to the current trends and demand.
Which leaves being published by smaller firms, These firms will not promote your book and might give low amount of royalty but will give all other kinds of benefits that a publisher gives. Plus its easier to be published with them. This may be a good way for authors being published for the first time, who know nothing about the publishing process, like I was.
So, all three methods have their own positives and negatives to be considered and may suit different kinds of authors. Self-publishing will work with someone who knows how to do most of the things themselves, they can be veteran authors or novice authors with some amount of knowledge. While publishing with a bigger firm usually only works for veteran authors or gods because it is that difficult to publish with bigger firms. And smaller firm is for someone who know how to write and advertise but don’t know anything else, making it the best option for novice authors.
So, if you are a published author, how did you publish your book? Or if you aren’t, how are you going to publish your work?
Aditya Bhartiya Mathur 