Self Publishing vs. Traditional Publishing

Today I’m going to face the issue known as self publishing vs. traditional publishing. We all know what each are, self publishing being tackling the publishing world on your own and traditional being getting the experts to help you out.

What I’m going to talk about is why readers choose traditional published books over indie books.

Is it really fair that we are part of a social stigma where indie authors are considered horrible writers and story-tellers? I once saw a forum post on Amazon by someone ranting to the public about how indie authors should stop marketing their books and give up writing. Is this kind of slander really necessary?

In some cases, yes. I can understand where the public is coming from. I have read quite a few indie books over the past two months since I was published. Some were really good, others … not so much. Sometimes I couldn’t get past the first few pages because every sentence contained at least a dozen spelling mistakes. Sometimes the story just wasn’t fulfilling enough for me. I even found errors in my own book when I looked it over (all fixed up nice now).

I believe there to be three main reasons why readers choose not to buy indie books.

• Not edited by a professional. Many indie books are riddled with spelling errors, punctuation mistakes, failing sentence structures, etc. People don’t want to read a story they can barely understand. It really takes the fun out of reading!
• Not getting their money’s worth. A lot of indie books sell for $0.99 on Amazon, while others are high-priced at $5.99. If your book is too cheap, readers get the sense that it won’t be worth their while, but if it’s too expensive, they may feel you are overcharging for something that isn’t great enough quality to pay that much for.
• Tired of indie books. Some readers, after giving indie books several chances, will avoid self published authors if the previous stories they read weren’t good enough quality to even finish reading. Although the next indie book they come across may be amazing, they will miss out on it because they have suffered through enough mistakes and bad plots already.

Not all self published books are duds, though, and not all traditional published books are amazing. Out of the last ten traditionally published books I’ve purchased, at least three I disliked, thinking the story and characters were boring or not developed enough. Traditional publishing does get rid of all of the spelling errors, but it can’t make a story great.

My conclusion is this: you may find a dozen horribly written indie books, plunged out there into the world by people thinking they were ready to publish when they weren’t, but for every bad indie book, I guarantee there’s also a good one. Readers shouldn’t be afraid to give indie authors a chance, to forget for a moment that this book has no traditional publishing company behind its spine.

That’s my thoughts for the moment. I’ll post again tomorrow about how authors post 5-star reviews on their own pages, and 1-star reviews on their competitor’s pages.

Thanks for reading.

~ Sandra

Talkin’ bout Marketin’

Hiya all! I’m now at 30 posts! Yay~!

In other news, my book is now available to purchase at amazon or smashwords for $0.99! This is pre-print price, and it will go up a few dollars after the printed copies come out next week. So grab a copy while it’s cheap!

Anyway… let’s talk marketing. I’ve received my super awesome posters today (keeping two to hang up and sticking the rest up around the city. The only question is, where exactly can I place these? There are common places I know of, like university, colleges, downtown, etc., but there must be more clever places to put up posters.

So readers, do you have any ideas? I would love to hear what you have to say.

I’ve also thought about sticking one or two up around my apartment building, but I’m sure management be like, “RAWR! Blah-de-blah, take down posters!” So I’m not going to risk it.

Also, does anyone know of any good blogs/forums where there are avid readers who like fiction/adventure and the whole like?

I’ve gotten a few good ideas from the pros over at http://thebookmarketingnetwork.com/. Things like putting posters up in your car, creating facebook & Twitter profiles for your book characters, staying in touch with top bloggers, and great stuff like that.

The problem with marketing is a budget. I have very limited funds right now, so something like http://www.iuniverse.com/ would be very, very expensive for me. The cheapest package is around $600 (and doesn’t include much at all), while the best package is $4000 and contains quite a few interesting things. But it’s $4000.

So… manual and free advertising is the only way to go right now. I’ve been thinking about designing my own business cards as well, depending on how much it would cost to print said cards.

Anyhow, marketing is quite the tricky and difficult endeavour. It requires a lot of hard work, especially when you’re doing it on your own. i.e. without a large publisher behind you.

Anyway, let me know what kind of marketing strategies you guys have, what worked and didn’t work, and all your crazy stories of being a published writer.

~ Sandra

Completed Manuscript … yay! : )

I’m finally done editing my manuscript! Such an exciting accomplishment! Now all that’s left is to publish it.

… Well.

This, I suppose, will be the hardest part. I’m not exactly well-educated on how to get the required task done. So it leaves me to massive amounts of researching about publishing and companies that publish worldwide. I don’t have an agent, so that instantly makes my chances to get published much harder.

There are, however, some companies that require no agents! So that will be my first choice, of course. I just hope they’ll take a liking to my book! *fingers crossed*

I think I would classify my book as young adult fiction, so I’m looking for companies that specialize mainly in that genre. (Though any company would be nice, I guess.)

If anyone out there has had a book published before, is in the publishing industry, or is just very knowledgeable in the area, please drop me a line! Let me know how it’s done and the best ways for me to go about it! I would really appreciate the info. : )

Anyway, I’m done for the day. I’ll leave you guys with a picture of what I’d like my cover to look like. Enjoy! : )