What is Self-publishing and Why Do It?

Self-publishing is when the author publishes the work instead of an established, third-party publishers and represents a small percentage of sales in terms of the publishing industry.

The main characteristic of self-publishing is that it is as its name implies, where the author or authors have complete editorial control over the content, printing, marketing, and very often the distribution of the material. In many instances, the author distributes the book strictly as print-on-demand with no kept inventory. Unfortunately, many self-publishers subsidize their work instead of profiting from it.

You may wonder why anyone would go through the trouble of self-publishing, there are several reasons why writers decide to go this route instead of using a commercial publisher. The main reason being that the work is often not of interesting enough
to the commercial publishers. Such as if a grade school decided to publish stories written by several students, though this may be very appealing to the students as well as their family, it would not be profitable for a commercial publisher.

Other reason may include but are not limited too:

The author is unknown, or has a limited following.
The subject matter is a popular topic, however only in a small geographic area.
The subject is on an obscure topic that few are interested.
The content is too controversial.
The author wishes for more control over their work.

It is a fact that when an author's work is excepted by a publisher, the author releases a certain amount of control over their work. Authors have very little to no say-so over the design of the book, its distribution, and its marketing. Though rare, publishers have been know to request the author to change the setting, character's name, and even appearance.

Many times, if the author has a limited market they may decide to self-publish in order to obtain a larger financial return. In this situation such as this, the author may risk a sizeable sum of their capital in order to self-publish, avoiding a commercial publisher from receiving their cut of the proceeds. An example of this would be a North Carolina author who writes legends and lore of the North Carolina coastline. The author is confident that tourist will purchase his collections from local gift shops. Even though the author also has the responsibility of distributing
his books as well, his payoff is a much larger percentage of the sale price.

There have been several self-published authors who were also best sellers, including William Blake, Virginia Woolf, Walt Whitman, William Morris, and James Joyce.
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