Self-Publishing vs. Traditional Publishing

1. Introduction: Hello and welcome to this course on self-publishing versus traditional publishing. My name is Steven horns. You spent a long time writing and perfecting your book. No matter whether it's fiction or nonfiction, need to decide what you want to do with it. Going to seek a traditional deal. You publish it yourself using platforms such as Amazon's kVp, drafted digital, Ingram spark amended the other excellent platforms that are available. This course can't give you a definitive answer to that question. What is called Stars? He's looking at the pros and cons of each path so that you can decide what's best for you. Everyone is different. Self-publishing may suit some people and not others, and vice versa. I've done both. I published two books through a large New York publisher. I've also published many non-fiction books and a novel myself. I'll show you those in a moment. Before I get started, I want to talk a little bit about terminology. Title of this course contains a term self-publishing. But in all honesty, I really don't like that term is it comes with a lot of negative connotations for poor-quality. Sure, there's lots of bad quality self-published books out there with poor or lack of editing and some really bad covers. But in this modern day where people take self-publishing seriously, there are many, many fantastic, high-quality books that are well-written, well edited, and have beautiful covers. Saying that though I much prefer the term independent publishing, your publishing independent of this traditional publishing companies. In the remainder of this course, I'll use that term for independent publishing instead of self-publishing. First, I want to show you some of my books so you can see my experience. Two books. So you can see on the screen now are published by a large traditional publisher called a press, which is an imprint of the larger publisher Springer. These books were written under a typical publishing contract. Three books you can see on the screen now, the art of conversation, a gentle introduction to Agile and Lean software development and the path to freedom. Nonfiction titles I published myself. Finally, the book on the left, Diary of a Martian is my debut novel that I released in 2023. This book was published myself and it's been performing brilliantly since Release. Book on the right on writing your first novel is a nonfiction writing craft book. We'll talk about the writing process of a novel. So as you can see, I've done both being published by a traditional publisher, and I've also published independently myself. I hope my books demonstrate that I'm coming from a place of experience. With that. Let's get started and look at what publishing actually is. 2. What is Publishing?: Sometimes I hear opinions like traditional publishing is the best way. An independent publishing isn't real publishing. So let's start off with a dictionary definition of what publishing actually is. Publishing, which is a noun, is the occupation or activity of preparing an issue in books, journals, and other material for sale or for free. And that definition is from the Oxford English Dictionary. According to this definition, publishing is making your work available to people, either as a paid-for products are for free. So you've released a book for traditional publisher via an agent that's publishing your self published a book on Amazon only. That's publishing. You self-published book Wired across multiple stores. That's publishing. You've created a PDF or made it available on your website that's also publishing. Or you may have posted some micro fiction on Twitter that's also publishing. If you create anything, amylase it via any means you have published. However, publishing through any means including traditional publishing does not guarantee success. Success is never guaranteed. If you want others to read your work, listen to your music, or watch your films, needs to become proficient in marketing and promotion. No matter how you make your work available, is the marketing that will determine your level of success. Of course, you won't Caspi of high-quality. But I'm going to assume that you've already made your work the best that it can be. So let's get started by looking at traditional publishing first. 3. Benefits of Traditional Publishing: The digital publishing is when you give a company device to take your book, edit the text, design the cover, and make it available to consumers in bookstores and online. Vast majority of publishers require an offer to first find an agent to represent them. The agent then pitches your books at a publisher. However, not all publishers require an agent's. Some small independent publishers least submit directly. But if you want to publish through any of the larger publishers or their imprints, you will require an agent's representation. Let's start with the benefits of traditional publishing. Many writers go the traditional publishing route and it's easy to see why most of their favorite books, so most likely published by one of the large publishing companies. And people dream of having their work published by the same brands. Until I discovered with the independent roots, I was no difference. There's a certain environments to seeing your printed book on the shelf in a bricks-and-mortar store. And I might say which publication where you take everyone dreams of its benefits of traditional publishing is being published by an established brand. We never book published by large publisher. You become part of their brand identity. This, on its own is an enormous benefits. Appearing on the same list as other well-established writers conveys a message to readers that your book is going to be of high quality. That brand awareness is very powerful. In the modern publishing landscape, where bookmarked in budgets are dwindling. Taking advantage of brand awareness and brand association is an effective promotional tool. If someone says I publish a book with a penguin, Harper Collins, or Simon and Schuster, you mentioned a book will be good as a brand recognition for those publishing houses is very strong. Our next benefit is you only focus on writing the book. Enormous benefits of traditional publishers. I will take on the vast majority of the financial risks to bring your book-to-market. This means you are paying for the structural editing, the copy editing and the proofreading, typesetting, cover design and printing, and any other costs or publish your work. If you're not interested in taking on any of those other tasks and you just want to focus on writing. Going through a traditional publisher is likely to be the best route for you. The next benefit is that it has the potential to catapult your career. If you hit all the market conditions and put out a book that catches on being published by a traditional publisher can catapult your career into the big time. Examples of this effect include authors such as JK Rowling, Stephen King, and Dan Brown, among many others. If you put the right book out at the right time and it's well promoted. You have everything, you need to become a tremendous success. That situations where every author aspires to myself included. We all want to write a brilliant book that captures our readers imaginations and blossoms into a full-time writing career. It is a long and hard journey from writing a first draft, finding an agent, selling the book to a publisher, to working through to the final publishable manuscript. Sunrise is it can pay off with huge sales from a single book in all the bookstores. Next benefit is that it can earn you in advance. When you sign a book deal with a traditional publisher, they offer you an advanced payments that is paid to you in milestones. These milestones can vary by publisher, but they often include a partial payment after the completion of the first draft, after submitting the final manuscripts and on publication of the book. It's important to remember that in advance is just that an advance on future payments. If e.g. your advance was 5,000 pounds or dollars, then your book has to earn at least 5,000 before you see any other royalties. Once I advance has been paid back to the publisher for sales, you will then start to accrue royalties. Sometimes have answers are mistaken for loans. They're not loans. Even if your book does not so well enough to repay the full advance, you don't have to pay back the difference to the publisher. He just won't earn any additional royalties. Advances are helpful to a writer as I ensure that you see some payment upfront before the long publishing process stars. New offers, advances are often not that big and it feels like they are shrinking by the year. Days of office receiving five or six figure advance, it seems to have mostly disappeared unless you already have a big name for yourself. The next benefit is that the complexities of publishing or handled for you. As I mentioned, working with a traditional publisher allows you to focus on writing the book as a publisher handles the editing, type setting uncover design does ideally, if you don't want to deal with those yourself. The publisher also manages the publishing process, a task it shouldn't be underestimated. The publisher will assign the ISBN numbers, prepare the book for prints, for traditional printing house such as clays or CPI group. And deal with warehousing, distribution, and enticing physical retail stores to stop the book and display visibly in the store. The publisher will also ensure that your e-book is distributed to all platforms that deal with ebooks sales. If you are lucky, organise the recording of an audio book. There's a lot of work to get a book on to the market so that people can buy it. If you want nothing to do with these business aspects of publishing, a traditional publisher could be a great route for you. The next benefit is there are no overhead costs. One key benefits of working with a traditional publisher is that they cover all of the costs of editing, proofreading, typesetting, cover design, and publishing. As you offer, you don't have to pay anything. Some companies known as hybrid publishers and vanity presses do charge you for a fee. But traditional publishers take on all the risk. And most of that risk is financial. Hybrid publishers publishes, publishes it, split the production costs with the offer and therefore share the risk. Royalty rates tend to be much fair to the author, 5050 in most cases. But you need to have the money up front to invest. Because the hybrid publisher is invested, they have an impetus to promote the book and get it to sell. Vanity publishers, on the other hand, take a large fee from the author to get the book on to the markets. Once a book is out, your relationship with them tends to be over. Unless you buy one of their expensive marketing packages. Vanity publishers have had a very bad name in the industry as they make their money by charging offers that don't have the need to promote the book unless you offer pays for their services. Are saying that money should always flow from the publisher to the offer, such as advances from royalties and not the other way around. Independent publishing can be expensive as you have to cover these overheads yourself. But once a book is on the market to keep a greater share of the money that is generated through sales. The next benefit is you get to work with experienced teams. The team you work with a traditional publisher will comprise of experts from your acquiring project manager to proofreaders hit, and they know how to market the book and make it the best that they can be making outstanding books. He's their speciality, their advice will be an enormous benefit to you. The guard is or what you feel about the traditional publishing model. After watching this module, you can be sure that the people you work with a publisher will be at the top of their game and very passionate about creating books. It most ventures in life is that people that you work with that can make the experience compelling and fun. I've worked with traditional publishers and I've met some brilliant people along the way. The final benefits I want to look at is it you're more likely to be sold in a physical store. When you publish. For a traditional publisher, your books are more likely to be sold in a physical retail store. Then when you publish independently, this reason could be a massive draw for writers. The photo, seeing your hard work on a shelf in a shop or an airport is exciting. Setting in physical stores requires a publisher to pre-print a large inventory of books that are then warehouse and distributed to stores, viral wholesale distributor. Compared to the prints on-demand manufacturing process using independent publishing. Now significant logistics involved in getting each batch of books into a retail store. But the result of seeing your book on a shelf is very desirable. So let's now look at some of the negatives of traditional publishing. 4. Negatives of Traditional Publishing: Despite the many benefits of traditional publishing, there are also challenges that can hold you up along the way. The first negative is it you sign away your publishing rights? When you write a book, you own the copyright to that book until the day you die and up to 70 years afterwards. At that point your book ends is the public domain. When you sign with a publisher, you keep the copyright over your work, but you sign away your publication rights to that publisher. This means that you give the publisher the exclusive rights or publish your book into the marketplace on your behalf. You can't republished a book yourself because you signed the way those rights to the publisher. So many offers. This isn't a problem. I just want to spend their time writing a book, then have another company deal with its publication on their behalf. Understand this. Publishing a book onto the market is hard work, is therefore much more than just writing and editing the manuscripts. Someone has to design the cover and type set the book. Then the book needs to be printed and distributed onto the retail markets. This process can be difficult and time-consuming, prompting songwriters to go with a traditional publisher. There's a problem with his route, though. Traditional publishers are very hip focused. This means you are looking for instant hits with their books. While traditional publishers have always hopes for his in the past, they were more willing to take on new writers and help develop their careers so they could prosper in the future for that publisher. Traditionally published authors say that attitudes seems to have shifted. Now publishers looking for his straightaway. If you publish a book and it becomes a hit, that's great. You'll publish it will throw everything into marketing and promoting that book. But if your book is not a hit and just sits in the mid list, you have a big problem. I spoken to numerous office whose books are sold relatively well, but slowly. They weren't hairs. What happened in many cases that the book went out our friends, because it's sold out the initial print run, and the publisher decided not to reprint the book as it wasn't in their financial best interests to do so. From a business perspective, this makes sense. If a book has sold slowly, you might think twice about ordering inexpensive print run from the office points of view, however, this is very bad. You have a book that's gone out of print, but the publisher still has the publication rights over that book, meaning you can't publish it elsewhere. Imagine how frustrating that is. You have a book, you have worked hard on, go out to print and there's nothing you can do about it. It is sometimes possible to get the rights back to your book. This can be very hard and sometimes expensive to achieve. It isn't in the publishes best interests to get the offer their rights back, even if they are not actively exploiting that book. The reason for this is that even though they are not actively exploiting the rights to that book and intellectual property by owning those rights, the valuation of their companies hire, especially if you're a public traded company. However, you may have a clause in your contract that states if a book goes below a certain number of cells in a quarter, you can negotiate your rights back. It's typical contract, e-book sales or clusters sales and all with hardback and paperback books. It doesn't take much effort for a publisher to run a promotion on an e-book to boost sales for that quarter, making it almost impossible to get your rights back. If the publisher is willing to hand those buyers bag, it might expect a payment for those wires. And that payment can be hefty. If keeping control over your publishing mice, he'd been able to publish your book wherever you want are important to you. Traditional publishing might not be the best route for you. The next negative or the amounts of gatekeepers that are involved. When publishing through traditional routes, you first need to find an agent. Agents exert a degree of editorial control before they are prepared to send your books, manuscripts, or publisher. This could be considered an advantage or disadvantage. For instance, they may ask you to change your books and appoint. They are not happy with it, but they feel the changes. We'll make the manuscripts more market-friendly. Those changes could go against your gut instinct and artistic vision. Only you can determine how you feel about that. Perhaps gatekeepers are a good thing. They help ensure that your book is of high-quality and tailored to the current market trends. In my view, however, these gatekeepers to often stop innovative books from hitting the market and having a chance. As I don't fulfill the current market conditions. I'm not saying editorial control should be bypassed. Every books should go through a professional editor in my opinion. But sometimes gatekeepers can stop a good book from even getting into the editing stage, which is a shame. Some of my favorite novels or by independent authors whose stories traditional publishers may shy away from as too risky. The next negative is that you may not be able to provide input into your covers. When he signed with a traditional publisher. In addition to sign away your publication rise, you also give up some creative control. You may be required to change your story based on the editors feedback. But I think everyone expects that. What you may not anticipate is your lack of creative control over the cover to your book. Each publisher is different and we'll get the offer different degrees of influence over the covers contents. In many cases, you might not have any inputs at all. The publisher would design the cover they feel fits the market for the book regardless of whether you like it or not. This has been the case in my experience. And for other traditionally published authors that I know. The authors input is minimal. And in most cases you offer is not happy with the cover that they were assigned. For one of my books. I thought the cover suggestion was a temporary cover, but it's actually the final cover. I also have it could be changed. They answered no. Creative control is something you need to take into consideration when you are seeking a traditional publishing deal. Be prepared that you may lose control over certain aspects of the book. You can, of course ask your agents and negotiates more control into your contracts. And i 0 off as you have done this. But they were already experienced offers have a proven track record and more negotiating power. You may not have this level of control as a new offer. The next negative is you may not earn out you advance. One of the publisher may pay you in advance. If you do not sell enough copies of your book to recoup the advanced, you won't earn any additional royalties. Royalties are only paid to the offer when that advanced has been recovered. Unfortunately, unless you are already famous, advanced, these can be quite small, averaging anywhere from 2000 pounds or dollars to 10,000 pounds. Has he advances on page you in stages as mentioned above, it can take anywhere 1-2 years to be paid the full advance. If you do not sell enough copies of your book to pay back the advance, you'll learn nothing extra for that book. It's quite grim. Rarely stories of office. You break out and hit the big time, which is fantastic. But they're the exception rather than the rule. You rarely hear about the office you don't own out there advances and make no additional money. The next negative is it your book could go out to Prince Hall back and paperback books produced by traditional publishers are pretty printed and then distributed into retail stores. This means that for publication date, a finite number of books will be produced for the initial print run. In an ideal scenario, the books are distributed to the stores readers by them, the publisher orders reprinting of the book as I are satisfied that the book is selling well. In many cases this will happen. However, in a less ideal scenario, the first print one takes a long time to sell and the publisher assumes there's little demand for the book, so they don't order a reprints. It's an extreme case. It's more likely that our Lord are several print bonds but in the future could decide to stop additional runs. That means the copies on the market are all there is. They sell out, the book is out of prints. Unfortunately, when this happens, there isn't much you can do about it because you no longer own the publishing rights. Meaning you have a physical book that you're sitting in limbo. You may still have a book and audio books and the markets, but not having print copies available can be soul crushing. The next negative is it royalty rates are typically very low. Traditional publishing royalty rates from a typical contracts are quite low for the offer, you're looking at around ten to 15%. And then your agents, if you have one, takes their cut from that. Traditional publishing business model is based on selling a large quantity of books to make any kind of profit for the offer. Of course, if you sold millions of books, tend to 15% of sales is pretty good. Some offers achieved these kinds of numbers, but mostly not. The next negative is that there is a long lead time to publication. From selling of publishing contracts and delivering your first draft. They can still be a very long lead time to publication. Naturally, you'll need to go through the editorial process. That's not any different from independent publication. But even then you can still look at at least a year to 18 months or longer until your book hits the shelves. If you are relying on an advanced payments, this timeframe also means that your payment schedule will be drawn out. The final legacy volunteer look at it, is that you're expected to do most of your own marketing. It's easy to think that when a traditional publisher releases your book, the marketing machine will fire up and promote your book to the masses and sales will sizzling. Sadly, any decent marketing budget is reserved for authors with a track record of sales. Anyone just getting started has to make do with a posting on the publisher's website and a few social media posts. Paid social media marketing campaigns may not be in your allocated budget. The unfortunate truth, or even a traditional publisher was still expect you to do most severe on marketing, and so you become a proven seller. Here's a problem though. Traditional publishing accounting is very slow. A book sold in January may not be reported to you until after three to six months later. Therefore, if you were to spend, say, $1,000 on Facebook marketing campaign, you will not know if any of those advert clicks if converted into sales for a very long time, That's not taking this consideration or your royalty rate per book can be very low. And that you struggled to make any form of paid social media marketing profitable at those royalty rates. In the next module, we'll, let's start looking at the benefits of independent publishing. 5. Benefits of Independent Publishing: Having looked at the benefits and challenges of traditional publishing, Let's do the same for independent publishing, otherwise known as self-publishing. Independent publishing is a very different process to that of traditional publishing. The author starts by writing and it is in their book with the help of a professional editor, or the same as traditional publishing so far. Then you offer writes the book description formats the inside of the book, an e-book, and designs the cover. Typically hiring professionals along the way. When the book is complete, edited, formatted, and ready to release. The offer uploads the books are various publishing platforms and then dives into the marketing and promotion of their work. So much more hands-on process. As with traditional publishing, going independent has its benefits and its drawbacks. Independent publishing can be very liberating varieties. So let's start by looking at some of the benefits. First, you are your own boss. When you're the publisher and the writer, you can be your own boss. You write unreleased books at a rate that you control and you're not restricted to the publishing schedule of another company. Sales and successes are yours and provided you follow the terms and conditions of any platforms that you published with. You can do what you want when you want. This level of freedom is exciting. Having creative and business control over your destiny is brilliant. Once you have a taste for it, you'll always be wary of any company or publisher wants to encroach on their independence. The next benefit is that you can establish your own brand and identity. It is not uncommon for independently pop it off to riots across genres that they enjoy. Emily's books under different pen names. When you publish yourself, you have complete control over your brand or brands. You may write high-octane techno thrillers under your real name, but also romantic comedies under a different pen name. This variety is easy when you add the publisher. I've met many authors who have built up quite the business for themselves by writing under different names in different genres. The next benefits is it you have complete creative control. With traditional publishing. You'll be up against various gatekeepers who exert their opinions over your work. Agents, publishers, commissioning editors, and others. They may ask you to change your story to fit their publishing plans. If you're okay with that, then fair enough. But for many of us, myself included, that's not acceptable. Being independence, you write your characters and plots however you want without interference from other people. Of course, it's still helpful to follow the advice and suggestions of editors that you work with. But they can never force you to change your story or push it another action that you're not happy about. They just make suggestions to help you along the way. The important thing is you have to control. The next benefits is that you keep most of your revenue. What he talks about how the royalty rates for most traditional publishers are very low and you need to sell in bulk to make any real return of independent publishing, the royalty rate you receive is much higher, up to 70 per cent on e-books and around 60 per cent for paperback books. After the book manufacturing costs have been deducted is high res means you can earn a decent return for your work by selling fewer books. If your book is enrolled in kVp select and Kindle Unlimited, which is Amazon's book lending subscription service. You can earn by readers borrowing your book. And you are compensated per page read, which can add up to quite a decent slicer revenue. Some of my earlier non-fiction books did very well with Kindle Unlimited patriots. It's a very useful tool to work with. The next benefit is that your publication is guaranteed by the publisher. Your book will certainly be published provided you don't break any content rules around things such as hate speech and inciting violence, or having a covered that shows any graphic or explicit violence or an overly sexual recover. If you write a book that you believe in and standby completely and you have ensured that the quality is as high as possible. Your publication is guaranteed because you are the publisher. Again, this is all down to having control. The next benefit is that established platforms make publishing easier. The idea of publishing a book yourself can feel daunting. Maybe that's one reason why you're watching this course. While independent publishing is hard work, the platforms you can use make the process straightforward and it's going to get easier every year. Don't get me wrong. Publishing is still a huge efforts. Now going to have to learn many skills besides writing. But compared to ten years ago, it's much more accessible. Another large benefits is that you will never go out to print. Earlier in this course. I'll discuss that with traditional publication books are printed in batches and then sent to stores via distributor. Printing in batches like this makes the per book cost of the book lower. But you have to deal with large inventories and warehouses and lots of logistics. When you publish yourself, your paper bag and hardback books are produced for publishing process called print-on-demand. In this process, after customer orders, the book, the book is printed, bound, and sent directly to the reader. As the publisher, you never have to handle that inventory and it's all handled for you. It's fantastic system makes the logistics of running your own School Publishing Company much easier. While the per book manufacturing costs are higher in this model, it's not significantly. So plenty of independent prints, on-demand books do very well and make substantial earnings for their offers. Some of my non-fiction paperback titles selling large numbers compared to their e-book versions. Because you are companies like Amazon that needs to store large inventories of your books in a warehouse. You don't need to worry about your book again, out-of-print. Amazon and similar companies store the book on files on their servers and then just print them on an order is made. Your book can never go out of print unless you decide to withdraw it from selling yourself. The final benefits of independent publishing I want to look at is that your social media marketing campaigns can be easily measured. Both very traditional publishing, the tracking and conversion of a marketing campaign on nearly impossible. With independent publishing is very straightforward. Backup version. I mean, if you run a Facebook adverts or target audience, the redirects to your books listing on Amazon. You can see near real time that sale appear in your Amazon Publishing dashboard when someone buys the book. This means if you are testing and advertising campaign, you can track wherever it's effective. If thousands of people click on an advert but don't buy the book, you can see that there's an issue and stop the adverse. If thousands of people click on the advert and a large proportion by the book, you now have an effective advert that you can scale up further. For independent publishing is the near real-time traceability of advert conversions that excites me the most. Being able to run an ad and see quickly if it's working, come in enormous benefit in helping your book find its audience. 6. Negatives of Independent Publishing: As we've just seen, there are many benefits to independent publishing. But of course, there's also some negatives. The first negative is he had to do everything yourself. Have independent publishing yet to take on a much more than just the fun of writing the book. You have to rearrange editing to format the e-book and paperbacks. You have to rearrange the cover design, your salt load, the books, all the publishing platforms. It has to do with web design for your websites. And you have to deal with marketing and sales, which is quite difficult in its own rights. You'll need to learn how to do a lot of this for yourself, but also know when to hire a freelancer for things such as editing and book cover design. Taking on this amount of work isn't for everyone and it can feel overwhelming the first time you publish. If you just want to write books and not worry about any of these other tasks may be best just looking for a traditional publishing deal. The next negative is it can be expensive. As you have any creative endeavor to create a product that fits the market and looks professional, you're going to need to invest some money. Editing, proofreading, cover design, and book formatting can be expensive if their skills you don't possess yourself and you need to hire freelancers to assist you. I routinely hire editors, proofreaders, and cover designers. The book formatting, I can do myself with tools like vellum, but those other aspects I do need help with. Social media marketing campaigns are also not free as he's marketing systems are paid to play. But those are writing a Facebook post or tweet and then watching the cells flooding in. I sadly gone. If you try to skip too many of these steps to save money, your risk publishing a substandard book which can affect your sales. Amazon is full of examples of independently published books where the author has put their heart and soul into the writing of the book. Then try to design the cover themselves, or even worse, use Amazon's cover generator. And guess what happens? Nobody buys the book. In reality, people would do, judge a book by its cover. If you are serious about independent publishing and you want to make a career out of it, you are going to need to invest some money. Because it's crucial that if your book is going to sell, you need to make sure that it looks just as good as its traditional published brothers. And that means effective editing and cover designs which make your book fit in, not necessarily stand out, but fit in with the rest of the market. The next negative is that placement in traditional bookstores is much harder. Independent publishing is made possible because of the internet. You publish your book, She's now online platforms like ADP or Ingram spark. Your books, e-books or paper bags are available for online stores such as Amazon and Barnes and Nobles, among other retailers. Making your book available online is easy beds. It's much harder to get physical books into stores. Still, placing your books in brick and mortar stores, it's not impossible. You can simply go to a small independent store and ask them to order the book for you. Plenty of my books have been ordered in stores by customers who did not want to buy it from an online retailer. If you publish for a company like Ingram Spark, it's easy for stores to order your books. If you publish using expanded distribution on Amazon, physical stores, maybe a little more reluctant to order. I don't like paying money to Amazon. It's also easy and fun to visit your local small bookstores, introduce yourself and so copies to them directly. I've done this numerous times and it is fantastic to see your book on their shelves. It's also a great way of engaging and given to the local community, as well as a great photo op, be unlikely to make any real money sending through physical stores compared to online retailers. If I pay for online marketing campaigns, always direct them to Amazon, is that's where I'm going to make majority of my sales. Another negative which I touched on earlier on in the course is that self-publishing or independent publishing can have a bit of a stigma for low quality. So to start this course, I said I don't like the term self-publishing because of that stigma. Date that stigma is valid because a huge number of poor quality books have been self-published. Books, you're terrible self-made covers and little to no editing and bad formatting. It's a shame because self-publishing promises to deliver something fantastic, the freedom and control to publish your own books. But it feels like many offers squander this opportunity with hard work and the help of freelancers. There's no reason why you can't create books that read well, a fun, look great and stand up today traditionally published cousins. The final exit I want to look at is it low sales and bad reviews could turn off traditional publish offers in the future. Some offers a forest I careers by starting out as independent publishers and then being picked up by larger traditional publishers later on when they have a proven track record. To really famous cases here are andy, where science fiction masterpiece The Martian, an ALJ teams have a romance hit, 50 Shades of Grey. Both books were published independently by their offers and then picked up by mainstream publishers later on. For these writers, switching to a traditional publisher was huge success. They already had huge fan bases. And having other publishers place their books in physical stores was effective, garnering them huge sales and positive reviews. If attracting a major publisher is part of your overall plan, need to ensure that your books do well when he published them yourself. If your books don't sell and they receive more negative reviews and positive ones, you could ruin your chances of being picked up by a publisher later on, countless independent authors have been picked up by traditional publishers who scholar Amazon sell shares looking for high-achieving new writers. If this is your goal, then it's not a bad one, then you need to be very certain that the quality of your work before you publish it. 7. Conclusion: When it comes to publishing your books, there is no right answer regarding independent versus traditional publishing. Both approaches, so positive and negatives, as you've seen in this short course, both involve hard work. There's no getting away from the fact that you have to write a book that you believe people will want to read. She needs to weigh up what's important to you and decide for yourself. The common factors for success in either publishing option is you need to write a good book. Even if you want an agent and a traditional publishing deal, an agent won't engage with you unless you have completed a competent first draft. Well, a first draft to them, it might actually be your 10th. I hope this course has given you lots to think about when it comes to deciding the root you wish to take. I recommend going through the course again and for each of the positives and negatives, make some notes and see how you feel about each of them. And that should help you decide which route you wish to take in the future. My name is Steven horns and you've been watching self-publishing versus traditional publishing. And I thank you for watching.