As a writer, you’ve basically got two options when it comes to getting published: traditional publishing or self-publishing. For a new writer trying to get noticed, neither is a terribly reliable option: there are no guarantees in this game. However, I’m very much convinced that, of the two, traditional publishing is by far the better option for a neophyte.
Why, you might ask? Well, for starters, self-publishing is expensive. Part of the trade-off you get if you manage to get traditionally published is the publishing house will shoulder that expense for you: when you self-publish, though, you shoulder that burden yourself. That can get prohibitively expensive, especially considering the hidden costs that come along with it: if you want to put something out that’s actually good, you won’t just be paying whatever self-publishing company you choose then walking away.
No, you’ll need to hire a professional editor to give the book a read-through, too, and you’ll also need a cover artist to give you something that stands out. As I’ve alluded to before, professional editors are expensive: unless you have an “in” in the industry, though, it’s the only way you’ll be able to get your work looked at by someone who actually knows what they’re talking about. The same can perhaps be said to an even greater extent for cover art: book cover art is a surprisingly tricky thing to do well, and you need a professional to do it if you want your cover to look even halfway decent.
And having your cover look halfway decent is extremely important, considering how crowded the self-published book market is. No, not just crowded: claustrophobic, packed-in-like-sardines is more like it. According to an article by Publishers Weekly, there were 1.68 million self-published books put onto Amazon in 2018 alone. Let that number sink in for a minute. 1.68 million. And while the vast majority of those are crap, it’s still really hard to make your work stand out amidst that vast sea, even if what you’ve done is legitimately good.
And this, of course, leads to another reason why it’s so hard to be a success when you’re self-published: you’ve got to do all the marketing yourself. While this is increasingly true of traditional publishers as well—they’re becoming less and less willing to sink marketing dollars into unproven writers, forcing them to shoulder more of the load—they’ll still do a little. When you’re self-published, you have to spend hours and hours every day curating your social media feed, building connections and getting your name out there.
Now, of course, I’m not saying that’s a bad idea, even if you’re getting traditionally published. But the fact remains that it’s hours out of your day that could be spent writing (or studying, if you’re both a student and a prospective writer, like me).
Overall, having any hope of self-publishing success takes massive amounts of time and money, two things I (and, let’s be real, most writers) don’t have much of. Plus, self-publishing means you’ve got to go it completely alone: as I said before, even a traditional publisher will give you some help. And having one is invaluable in terms of distribution: it means that, if they do take a chance on you, your books can be on bookstore shelves all over the country. Those bookstore spots are fought for mercilessly: even being in one of the remaining physical bookstores is a massive leg-up for any writer.
And if you’re self-published, your odds for getting there are close to zero.
That’s not to say self-publishing is never a good option, though: it’s just not a good option for a neophyte novelist. The two main scenarios where self-publishing is the better way to go are if you want a more personal project printed in a professionally-bound book (I’m thinking something like a family history, or a family cookbook or something like that), or if you’re a celebrity (or even just someone with a large social media following: I’m talking, like, 100,000+ followers). However, the vast majority of neophytes will fit neither of those categories: thus, self-publishing will almost certainly just be a sinkhole for your time and money.
I suppose you could also self-publish if you just want to brag to your friends that there’s a book in existence with your name on it. It’s a rather expensive form of bragging rights, but it is a thing you could do. If you want to be a legit novelist, though, traditional publishing, while still exceedingly difficult to succeed in, is the way to go.
