Advantages & Disadvantages of Self-Publishing



Rock Arch at Il Parsott, Malta


In my previous post, I listed the advantages of Self-Publishing as shown below in black. Now I have added the disadvantages in red and further advantages in blue.

1. The book can be supplied in a pdf format, or as a Word document and it will be laid out for you. If you do allow a self-publishing organisation to lay out your book for you, you may find that the number of pages increases dramatically with a lot of space being included.  This will influence the price of printing and could result in a much higher cost price than what would be regarded as a reasonable retail price.

2.  The publisher obtains the ISBN and copyright, but the copyright is retained by the author. So far, I have not experienced any difficulties with this arrangement, and am now selling my book as an electronic version using the same ISBN.

3.  The book trade will be supplied with an electronic record that links to your book so that any bookshop can purchase it direct from the publisher.  The advantage of this is that they will be able to obtain a copy for a customer who asks for it.  The disadvantage is that if your book is unknown, there will be no copies on the bookshelves for customers to see.

4.  ‘Print on demand’ is used so that copies are only printed as required. Printing single copies of a book is much more expensive per copy than a large print run, and then it might not be possible for your book to be sold at a competitive retail price.

5.  All distribution to customers or bookshops is undertaken on your behalf.  This is a major advantage because if an author had to undertake this task, it would be very time consuming, and also might prove to be more expensive as organisations who undertake distribution on a large-scale can do so not only more efficiently, but also much more cost-effectively.

6.  You can decide on the retail price and the royalty you would like to receive on each sale.  While this is a true statement, it is not exactly so straightforward.  

In any calculations, consideration has to be given to how the retail price of your book compares with others of similar size/genre which are already on the market as this will influence whether customers purchase your book; unless your book is spectacularly different, you cannot charge more than those being sold by other authors.

Then there is the cost price, or printing cost of your book, which will be the cost you have to cover before anything else.

Therefore, the royalty you receive will be determined as being the difference between a reasonable selling price and the cost price.

7.  The book, including a lot of details, will be displayed on the Amazon website as well as on the publisher’s own website.  The publisher’s website could possibly only receive a minimal number of hits, whereas the Amazon website is probably the most popular site for those wishing to purchase books online, but if the book is sold via this method, the author is likely to receive a reduction in their royalty payment.

8.  Cover design was included if a picture was supplied.  From my experience, there will be an extra charge if the publishing house supply a picture for the front cover.  Whether or not a picture is supplied, a different picture has to be used if the book is published elsewhere, ie electronically.

9.  Books can be purchased personally at a reduced cost price. This will only be true if large quantities are purchased at any one time.

10.  A wide range of marketing options are available which will facilitate the book being marketed throughout the world.  There are some marketing opportunities that are free of charge, and I will cover these in my post entitled “Marketing a Self-Published Work”.  However, there are many marketing options being offered by self-publishing organisations that are extremely costly, and self-published authors need to evaluate whether the price of a particular option will result in sufficient return to cover that cost.

In addition to the above, there are other disadvantages of self-publishing that I will be covering in my next post.

However, despite everything mentioned above, I am proud to have published my first book, and I am writing two more.