Writer's Fallout Shelter

Can I be lazy and say that my answers haven't changed materially since I wrote "Re: Re: Thanks all!!"  ? I still think it's right and appropriate for some projects, provided you have a clue what you're doing. I do not believe in paying to publish; however, there are real costs to publishing a book, and carrying those costs yourself, reaping higher profits - eventually - as a result, is a viable alternative to commercial publishing.

To me, the main disadvantages of self-publishing are as follows:

- Fellow "writers" who don't edit, don't know how to format a book, don't have the first CLUE about what a book should look like, giving self-publishing a bad name. That doesn't make MY book bad, but it does lead to a certain stigma around the whole concept, which in turn makes any self-published book harder to sell.

- You have to either work with a POD publisher (like Lulu), which results in higher production costs that make final book prices less competitive, OR you work directly with the printer and invest the capital for a decent print run. A traditional publisher who is willing to invest in your book and pay you an ADVANCE on royalties has the experience to at least believe they can SELL the book and make a profit. They have longstanding relationships with commercial print vendors and can negotiate incredibly good prices (based on overall volume - not JUST the volume for YOUR book) - you aren't likely to beat that on your own. (I have a lot of faith in myself and my writing, but being a working girl with a family to support, and not having scads of cash saved up even for my children's college tuition, the thought of buying up to $30K worth of one title on a first run - that I'm going to have to turn around and sell, with little or no marketing and sales support - kind of takes my breath away.)

Some interesting self-publishing statistics:

Irma Rombauer used $3,000 from her husband's estate to publish The Joy of Cooking in 1931. It still sells over 100,000 copies a year.

In 1918, William Strunk self-published The Elements of Style for his college classes. E.B. White later revised it. It continues to sell thousands of copies every year.

Self-published classics include Henry David Thoreau's Walden and Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, both of which continue to sell thousands of copies, more than 100 years after the deaths of the authors.