The Publishing World and Self Publishing

So I recently stumbled across this:

http://yourkickasslife.com/free-publishing-call

It's a free call from Andrea Owens who...well let me just paste from her website:

"Andrea Owen is a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC) from The Coaches Training Institute. She holds a Bachelor of Science from California State University in Kinesiology, specializing in Health Science, as well as a personal training certification from the American Council on Exercise since 2005. She was selected by the Kinesiology faculty for outstanding achievement in the Kinesiology degree program in 2009. She has also worked for the American Council on Exercise on the corporate level."  http://yourkickasslife.com/

I hadn't heard of her before coming across the call but I encourage anyone interested in publishing to check her out.  Her call is filled with great words of wisdom about the publishing world including whether self publishing is right for you.

I have an old friend who self published a book on amazon.  It's a nonfiction book about how to prepare and pass the bar exam.  He made it seem pretty easy to have a book self published and I admit the lure of writing and seeing it relatively quickly in print is rather tempting.  Think of all the advantages of self publishing...
- you get to keep the money you make
-whatever you want in the book gets to be in the book
-you're in complete control
-it's quicker

I'm a bit of a control freak so the last one is particularly tempting.  The idea of having someone tear apart my work piece by piece is a bit scary.  However, let's look some of the advantages of publishing with a major company....
-you have experts who will make your book sell-able
-you have a marketing team
-you have professional editors to fix all the mistakes you didn't even know you were making

Also tempting.  In this day and age, the reality is that many of us can write and publish a book without the help of the big publishing companies.  But then what?  We'd have to market the book, figure out how to sell it which will probably be on our own website or going in person to events that host vendors.  I used to run the vendor circuit when I had a home bakery.  I'd sign up for local craft fairs and festivals to sell my treats and I remember one event a self publishing writer had a booth.  She wrote historical fiction for young adults and she tried to sell at craft fairs.  She may have been successful, I don't really know, but for me I'd rather have a professional team come up with marketing strategies.

But everyone is different.  It depends on your ultimate goal.  For me, I want my books to be read by the masses because I want my messages to be heard by as many people as possible.  I like the idea of working with a publishing company, even though realistically I know that it may take years and years to even be accepted by one.  And even that doesn't guarantee the book will end up on the store shelves.  But as writers, I think we know and accept the risks.  Our labors may make us millions or they may never be read by anyone outside of our families.  It's the love of writing that keeps us going.

So whether you plan to self publish or not, I'd say just keep writing, reading and learning about the publishing process.

Do you plan to self publish?  Why or why not?  Leave a comment!