Is it more expensive to self publish or use a publisher?

Question

I'm wondering what I should use to publish my book, any suggestions?

Answer 1

There are so-called vanity publishers that you pay to publish your printed book. Only use them if you want a limited number of printed copies of your work to give away for free to your friends and relatives. Do not use them if you want to become a successful writer, because these publishers do not do any marketing and won't help your book sell.

Then there are traditional publishers. Publishing through them costs you nothing. You will get an advance payment or royalties for each book they sell. The will make an effort to market and sell your book. This is the path to take if you want to have a career as a writer and see your printed book in bookstores.

Then you can self-publish, either through print (where you have to pay for the printing) or as ebook (where often you pay nothing or only a small fee of around 20 dollars). If you self-publish, you will have to take care of the marketing and distribution of your printed book or ebook yourself. This is another path you can take if you want to have a career as a writer, but you likely won't see your printed book in most bookstores.

The cost is highest for vanity publishers, and the earnings with vanity publishers are zero. The cost with a traditional publisher is zero, but it is extremely difficult to get a publishing deal that way. Self-publishing costs little money but a tremedous lot of effort (and maybe money) to market your book. If you are successful, you can earn more money as a self-publisher than through traditional publishing, but it has a high cost in terms of time and effort.

	vanity publisher	traditional publisher	self-publishing
cost (money)	hundreds of dollars	0	0 to a few hundred dollars b
cost (effort)	0 a	some	endless hours of marketing
potential commercial success	0 a	hundreds to millions of dollars	nothing to millions of dollars

^a An author can certainly expend the same effort for marketing in vanity publishing as in self-publishing and will then have the same success. But those choosing to self-publish will usually not choose a vanity publisher but a (cheaper and/or better quality) printing house (for offset printing) and/or a low-cost self-publishing platform (for ebook and/or print on demand).

^b Cost in self-publishing comes from paying for editorial services, copyediting, translation, cover art, book design, etc. It is 0 only if you do all of that yourself.

Answer 2

I've done both, though in different areas.

I have two self-published fiction books that essentially nobody cares about. I suck at marketing, and as a consequence I sold about 10 copies of each of them, and half of those at conventions I attended. Unless you are good at marketing and willing to put in the time and effort, self-publishing gives you a 99.99% chance that you and your mom are the only people who ever buy a copy.

I have published a non-fiction book with a publisher. I got paid a fixed sum in advance (which means after submitting the final draft, before it went to print). They are advertising it and selling it. Only thing I've done is having my picture taken and showing up to one book convention.

Since you specifically ask what is more expensive:

Self-publishing cost me less than a hundred US$. The main cost was having a few proof copies printed and shipped so I could check how it all looks in print, correct any flaws (e.g. the inner margin had to be larger than I had anticipated) and do it again until I was happy with the result.

Publishing via publisher cost me zero.

tl;dr: Always try to publish through a publisher (a real one, see Ben's answer about vanity publishers). Only if you've tried several publishers and nobody is interested and you've had a real hard look in the mirror to understand whether your work is actually good and they're the idiots or if there's a reason nobody wants it, then go the self-publishing route.

PS: That said, we are all vain and irrational. I'm currently self-publishing my next work chapter-by-chapter online simply because I want to. That'll probably make any future publisher deal near impossible, but whatever.

Answer 3

+1 to Ben. All I would add is that the traditional route of agents and publishers mean your book is read by professional evaluators of your genre that understand the current market and what is selling, and agents in particular also know what your story is worth and how to protect your foreign rights, any potential film rights, etc. Publishers can also provide experts in cover design (which is extremely important for sales), and editing.

Self-published authors do not have such an advantage, and their lack of expertise in 99% of cases leads to virtually zero sales.

Do not underestimate the value of having an agent with tons of experience in evaluating your work, and the value of the publisher with possibly decades of expert experience in producing and marketing people's work.

Any share the typical agent and publisher take from your book is well worth it, 50% of something is much more valuable than 100% of nothing.

Yes, it is harder to get through to the agent and/or publisher. But that is a good thing, if they don't want it, there is a good chance that there are not enough customers for it to make a profit.

That is not always true, JKR was rejected by every single publisher to whom she sent the first Harry Potter book. Like 20 of them. Including the one that eventually did publish it -- His young pre-teen daughter picked up JKR's book from the reject pile, and read it, and told her father he had to publish it.

And that is what launched the best selling franchise of all time.

I would at least try the traditional route, for a year, before you resort to self-publishing and self-marketing.

Answer 4

Hypothetically, it is more expensive self-publishing because, if you don't have the skills, you should hire someone to proofread and edit yout book, impaginate it and make a good cover. Then, you have to care for the marketing part, on social media with sponsorized insertions, a good website and stuff. If you find a good publisher, not one that you pay to publish (vanity publishers, for example), you won't pay a dime.

Answer 5

Traditional publishers will do your editing and book cover and the work to get your book ready to be sold but they do very little marketing. You as the author are still doing most of the marketing. The main advantage they offer is to list your book in their catalog of books for sale but it is still up to the bookstores to chose to buy then. Plus there are some down sides to Traditional publishing as well. First off they own all the rights to your book. That means they can make changes you may not want. While most work work with you on changes, ultimately they get the final say. Also they can also sit on your book for years before they decide to actually do something with it. If they ever do. Also your royalties are very low, for a brand new author it can be as low as 0.15 a book.

Vanity press will charge you way more then they should for everything, editing book cover and formatting.and then charge you for copies of your books for a large profit for them. Leaving you a very small profit margin for yourself or else you have to charge a lot more for your books.

Self publishing does come with a bit more cost of front in finding and paying for a book editor, cover designer and O'Flaherty things that a traditional publisher will pay for up front and then take the cost out of your book sales. However in the long run you will be making all the profit off your books. A lot more then through a traditional publisher.

No matter which way you choose to publish most if not all of the marketing will fall on the Author. Unless you hire an agent or publicist. But if you look at the amount of profit per book sold self publishing will get you the most money in your pocket. Especially with POD (print on demand) like Amazon.

Ultimately it is choice, but I hope the information I have shared helps you.