What Exactly Is Self-Publishing?

What exactly is self-publishing? I think to answer that question I first need to explain what traditional publishing is.

Traditional publishing is when a publishing house publishes your book. They read over your manuscript and then decide whether or not they want to publish it. They then send you a contract, and you work out what you think to be a fair deal with them and sign it. They then own the rights to your book, will hire an editor to go over your manuscript until it meets certain standers, send it to a printing company, and then distribute it among stores and the like. Often you will have to get an agent to help you get the attention of publishers as a lot of them do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

When you self-publish, you do all the work yourself. You write the book, edit it and then pay a company to print the book. I use Createspace which is owned by Amazon, so they list my books on Amazon for free and take a percent of all sales.

The biggest differences between traditional and self-publishing are that with self-publishing you don't have to sign a contract and you don't get as many distribution opportunities. To some, the latter statement may seem like a con, but I'll explain in upcoming posts how this doesn't have to be a deciding factor as to whether or not you want to self-publish.

Tune in tomorrow to find out why I personally decided to self-publish and I how feel about the process.

-Miranda Atchley