What Is Self-Publishing?

There is a lot of jargon floating around in publishing, and there’s often some overlap between what things mean.

In a nutshell, publishing is the act of preparing, selling, distributing works for public readership.

Within this there are two main branches of publishing:

• Traditional (‘trad’) publishing: This is the form of publishing where all the risks and costs are borne by the publisher.
• Self-publishing: Also known as ‘contract publishing’ and occasionally as ‘indie publishing’ (although this is misleading – see below), this is the form of publishing where the author bears the risks and costs.

Within both of these umbrellas there are, of course, many types of publishing – within traditional publishing there is a great difference between trade and academic or educational publishing, and between commercial and independent publishing (where the publisher is run by those who own it, as opposed to being owned by a hedge fund or similar); and within self-publishing there is a great difference between making your own words available through a system like Amazon’s KDP and setting up an arrangement with a self-publishing company like Haywood Books.

Publishing has long been going through various huge changes, and at the moment the fastest-growing sector is self-publishing. In short, authors are seizing control!

So why self-publish?

• There is no need to attract an agent, then a publisher, wading through endless rejection letters.
• Publishers only tend to commission titles that they think will sell, and it is a faddy industry; self-publishing means you don’t have to stick to set genres, hot topics or conform to norms.
• Self-publishing gives authors the possibility of building a backlist of titles so that they have more clout if they want to go on to land a traditional publisher.
• It is a good way to learn about the industry – working with a publishing partner who can guide you.
• Sometimes publishers revert the rights to titles if they don’t sell loads – and sometimes authors just want to keep these in print.
• Self-publishing can be the quickest way to get your titles to the market.
• You retain full control over the creative aspects of your title.

So why self-publish with us?

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