When our book club decided to write a collection of short stories that would eventually get made into a book, little did we know that writing the book was going to be the easy part. Once the decision was made to publish it, then the real work began.

Initially we decided to use an independent publisher also known as a vanity publisher that would essentially take care of getting the book formatted and edited to online standard, registered and copyrighted in all the correct places, and then placed on a few of the popular book sites for exposure, distribution and purchase.  This may seem like a lot to receive from an online publisher, but this is typically the standard program they generally provide.

To our frustration, there was no additional marketing or promotion done to drive up sales for the book. Thus, the majority of sales came from us. We actually did our own promoting on social media, obtained local press coverage, used word of mouth and organized various book signings.

Now just to be clear, this is not a post about not using an online publisher, because they did help get the ball rolling so we could get our first book published, and helped us see how the process comes together. So if you’re new and just starting out and you’ve decided to take this route, then that’s a great thing! The ultimate goal is to get your book published, and that’s all that matters.

That being said, this post is specifically about how and why we decided to self-publish. We wanted to have more control over our book so we could reap more of the reward of our hard work at marketing and promotion, rather than continue to share the bounty and profit with the publisher who was making significant money from our efforts, but not helping with any part of this process that would ensure the book became a success.

Reason #1- Control

So we wanted more control over our book.  That meant deciding to self-publish. Yes this would mean more work and not having the support of a team, but we also wouldn’t have to wait for the publisher’s approval to do certain things with our book. Essentially our first reason to self-publish comes down to us wanting to decide what the future outcome of our book would be.

If we didn’t get back control of our book, then the publisher was always going to tell us how things would be managed as long as there was a contractual agreement in place about distribution and royalties. Also they decided how much of a royalty to take to cover their administrative costs and expenses, and they dictated the terms of payment to us based on quarterly sales and units sold. In our case, this was not negotiable.

With self-publishing there are no quotas of any kind and any sale we now make comes directly to the book club and we don’t have to wait for any type of quarterly report.

Reason #2- Access + Exposure

Before we severed the contract with the publisher, we decided on a new marketing and promotion strategy that would involve more social media, and other popular book sites to generate exposure for our book. Initially, book signings and word of mouth definitely helped generate interest in the book, but in this era of high social media usage, we would have greater success putting our book on multiple platforms. This would also garner more exposure not just in domestic markets, but potentially international markets since everyone these days has access to the world wide web.

Reason #3- Future Outcomes

With a new marketing strategy in place, deciding to sever the contract with the publisher didn’t seem so daunting after all. We were already doing the majority of the promotion ourselves. Plus, after a little over a year we also had an understanding of what was involved with the publishing process, and knew we could sell books even without a heavy presence on social media.

Now we would not only reap the rewards of how we decided to market the book, but we would be able to springboard into other directions as well. We could decide to do a sequel, make an audio book or focus more specifically on certain stories of the book and write something new. The point is, the possibilities were endless since deciding to self-publish for ourselves instead of leaving it with a traditional style publisher.

We realized once we took back control, set a plan, and executed that plan, that bringing our ideas to life shouldn’t be in the hands of anyone, but us.