TheNextBigWriter Premium → Self-publishing, Agent, or Straight to Publisher - What did you choose
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Hi all,
I'm just curious to see how everyone went about this ever-evolving question. Did you self-publish? Find an Agent? Go straight to an open-submission publisher?
What made you choose this particular path?
To be clear, I'm not trying to figure out "what is better" here, so try to keep it civil, just curious to see people's motivations for one route or another.
I started a publishing campaign that spread to over five months. I sent a total of 53 query letters and such. I received 50 rejection notices. I found that self-publishing using KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) is easy. They even provide free desktop tools to aid you in taking a DOC/RTF/DOCX file and making an Amazon eBook formatted file fit for publication. There is even a free cover designer that allows upload of your own artwork. From raw input to being available on Amazon was 18 hours.
Bill
I self-published. I'm pretty technically adept at formatting and marketing so I didn't think a publisher would add much. Because I keep all of the profit, I can promote and market more than if I had to split the royalties with a publisher.
I self published my first book with Createspace. Since the book was just over 200 pages it wasn't difficult to do. By that I mean, I went over it many times to be sure it was correctly done, and a 200 page book made it easier. My husband helped with all the technical issues and I was happy with the result. Createspace offers choices for covers, but since the book is based on my mother's memoir, I used a picture of her. It was published 1 1/2 years ago, and I'm still selling books. That's partly from my offering power-point presentations to various local groups. Just had one last night with 60-70 people in attendance. The downfall of self-publishing is not doing a good enough edit because you want to rush it to print. (I can't stress the last sentence enough.) Unfortunately, many do this and self-publishing has gotten a bad name.
For my next, book (170,000 words) which is almost completed, I'm going to try and find an agent. I know it is very difficult, but I think I have something that might get picked up. I'm also a lot wiser than when I published my first book. If I can't secure an agent, after trying for a reasonable amount of time, I will self-publish again, but this time I might hire someone to help. This second book is 4 times the size of my first.
From everything I've heard, I would never go right to a publisher. Everyone I've talked to, who has been in this business, has said to stay away. I try to learn from those with experience.
Hope that helps.
Sherry
From everything I've heard, I would never go right to a publisher. Everyone I've talked to, who has been in this business, has said to stay away. I try to learn from those with experience.
You obviously have not talked to me. I went the agent route at first and received nothing but rejections and, in greater amounts, no responses at all. So I self-published my first novel using CreateSpace. But then I discovered publishers who accept agent-less submissions, and I've been with indie publishers ever since. Granted, you lose profit as a result, but that's in return for having a lot of the heavy lifting done by someone else. The trick is to find a compatible publisher, one that is author-friendly and amenable to addressing concerns. Marketing, though a good publisher helps with that, is still primarily up to the author - as it will be, unless you're a top name like Grisham or Coben, even if you have a Big 5 publisher.
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TheNextBigWriter Premium → Self-publishing, Agent, or Straight to Publisher - What did you choose
