Self-publishing or traditional publishing, which is best?
To self-publish or to go for a publisher? To publish your own book confidently as an indie author or to feel that only a publisher will be able to give you what you want?
Views on all this are gradually changing and the major success of self-publishing authors - who often then turn to traditional publishers - has altered a lot of writers' views on the subject
One thing which has to define a self-publisher is that they must be confident of handling the work themselves, not just setting up the origination of their book, but particularly the marketing and promotion. For the confident and can-do author, it makes sense to give it a go. You will learn a great deal, even if you don't achieve the sales you might like to. You can always go for the other option a bit further down the line.
One successful writer who self-published recently is the Swedish author Carl-Johan Ehrlin. His bestselling book The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep went to number one in the Amazon charts before the author decided to go with traditional publishers, who have now made it available in 40 countries, but he's still self-publishing in Sweden. Ehrlin says:
"I've often heard people talk about the divide between publishers and self-publishing but it doesn't have to be that way. The goal is always the same-to publish a book that will do something for people: entertainment or, in my case, helping them go to sleep."
Perhaps authors like this are best described as adopting a hybrid approach, but there are plenty of writers who feel less confident than those described in John Bond's article in this week's link to Outliers, not outsiders, who are able to orchestrate a team of freelancers and marketing services to achieve exactly what they want out of self-publication. They take control of the publication of their own book and often very effectively. There are though still many who are not ready for this, or who are not confident about their own knowledge of how to go about it, or who perhaps prefer to leave it to someone else and concentrate on their writing.
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