Why I self Publish

Reposted from my other blog https://wordpress.com/posts/gettingthewordsout.blog

I have stated it before, and I’ll state it again; we all have ideas to share and stories to tell. It should be understood that the chances of an author being accepted by a traditional publishing house are slim unless you are already a well known author.

Not every author is well known, and the traditional publishing houses get a ton of submissions daily from authors hoping for shot at stardom. Alas this does not happen for the majority of those authors, as the traditional publishing houses have their protocols to bring new authors on board. Since November 2007, when it was called Digital Text Platform, Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing opened the door for authors to get their own words out to the masses.

That’s great, but what is Kindle Direct Publishing? KPD is amazon’s book publishing platform that opened the door for many independent authors and gave a place to self publish their work, and as of this writing, Amazon’s KDP holds 80% of the e book market.

What makes KDP so attractive is the high royalty rates and creative control that traditional publishers do not offer, better yet you retain the rights to your work! Secondly it costs nothing to self-publish on KDP. If you choose to have your work edited professionally, there will be a cost that comes out of your pocket, as well as cover design and marketing. All of these can be done by you and it does take time to do these, but the cover design can be done on sites like Canva.com for free, which is what I use for my cover designs. For editing I use Grammarly, which is a free as well.

As a self-published author free is good because we need to use our resources mindfully, and we do not have the extra funds to have these things done professionally, yet. As for marketing your work, this can be done for free as well it just takes some leg work from you.

Marketing your work is a necessary step to get your words out to the masses and there are five things that need to be done by you:

1. Create your author brand. Let the world know who you are and what you are writing about.
2. Set up a website and social media. Not just an author page on KDP. Utilize Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc..
3. Start an email list. This can be done from your website, and have a call to action something along the lines of “If you liked this work, leave a review”.
4. Make sure that you have a great design for your book covers, and description.
5. Get some book reviews to showcase on your website.

At this point in this writing, I want you, Dear Reader, to know that I am NOT sponsored by any of the above mentioned companies, but I do whole heartedly endorse them for the beginning, or seasoned self-published author.

In conclusion for someone who has always wanted to have their work published, KDP is a great place to start your journey. And for those that will inevitably say to you “Well your not really published because you did it yourself.” I would ask them how many of their books are published either by traditional publishers or self-published?

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