Why self publish

Self publishing offers authors complete flexibility and control over their book production and distribution. With advances in digital print it is possible to produce just a few copies at low cost without committing to large print runs.

Authors can have many different reasons to self publish. These could range from not being accepted by traditional publishing companies to desiring full control and artistic freedom.

Other reasons could be:

• Author cannot get published by traditional publishers for one or more reasons
• Author is unknown
• Topic is obscure
• Topic is controversial
• Topic is only of interest to a small geographic area or a small group of people
• Writing, style, or genre was rejected
• Author desires complete artistic freedom
• Author does not agree with editorial changes a publisher would make
• Author wants complete control over the books outcome, database, sales and customers
• Overall low publishing cost
• Author would prefer to publish content independently

Authors may choose to self-publish because they want control, because they want access to their customer list, or because they love the business of publishing. When working with a publisher, an author gives up a degree of editorial control, and sometimes has little input into the design of the book, its distribution, and its marketing. This has been a substantial motivator in the rise of comic book self-publishing.

In the late 1970s, creators such as Dave Sim and Wendy and Richard Pini chose -- in spite of offers from publishers -- to self-publish because they wanted to retain full ownership and control, and they believed they could do the job more effectively than a publisher. This was facilitated by the development of comic book specialty shops, and the distribution network that serves them, which is more open to small-publisher and self-published material than traditional bookstores have been. Numerous cartoonists have followed their example, and by the late 1990s the majority of comics in terms of titles were self-published.

They remain a small percentage of overall sales, however, with sales of a given book often falling short of 1000 copies. A similar movement took place in the music industry during the same period, coming largely out of the punk rock phenomenon.

Authors in a specialist area may be confident of a certain number of sales but also realise that the maximum number of sales is limited, and wish to maximize their earnings. In this situation, authors may risk a significant amount of their own capital to self-publish. This avoids a publisher taking any part of the proceeds and, if also self-distributed, avoids distribution fees as well. The payoff is a much larger percentage of the sale price being returned as profit.

In recent years, television writer and producer J. Michael Straczynski has self-published a successful series of books containing his scripts for Babylon 5, his most famous television creation.

Business professor Philip M. Parker has patented a method to automatically produce a set of similar books from a template that is then filled with data from database and internet searches. He self-publishes these books and prints them on demand. In January 2008 he was listed as the author of 85,000 books at Amazon.com.