Self-publishing my Debut Novel Just for the Thrills

As GOLIATH FALLEN goes through the last stages of edit­ing, the time for an impor­tant deci­sion has come: either self-pub­lish­ing my nov­el or go the tra­di­tion­al route. It’s a deci­sion every author will have to make soon­er or lat­er, and it’s not an easy one at that—especially for a debut nov­el. The stakes are high. Once self-pub­lished, my book will be out there for­ev­er. If it ends up sink­ing in the sea of self-pub­lished erot­ic fic­tion that Ama­zon has become, there’s lit­tle chance that a tra­di­tion­al pub­lish­er will pick it up. But, if I go tra­di­tion­al, it will be months of query­ing agents, and I might lose cre­ative con­trol once it’s sold.

Goliath Fall­en rep­re­sents six years of hard work, so it’s not a deci­sion I take lightly.

Doing the research

Before mak­ing a choice, I turned to Google for val­i­da­tion like the respon­si­ble adult I am. Most advice I found came to a sim­i­lar con­clu­sion: if you have a plat­form and a sol­id mar­ket­ing game, there’s a far greater chance your book will do well if you self-pub­lish. Oth­er­wise, going tra­di­tion­al might make more sense.

How­ev­er, sign­ing up with a tra­di­tion­al pub­lish­er might not be what one expects. It turns out that unless it’s one of the Big 5, there’s a chance your pub­lish­er will only mar­ket your book in a lim­it­ed way (if they mar­ket it at all). In those cas­es, mar­ket­ing is still up to the author. Some agents might not even bat an eye at your query unless you already have an estab­lished plat­form you can lean on.

On the oth­er hand, there’s the bud­get. Tra­di­tion­al pub­lish­ers cov­er all pro­duc­tion costs, includ­ing edit­ing, for­mat­ting, cov­er design, and dis­tri­b­u­tion. If self-pub­lish­ing, all those costs would come out of your own pock­et. And trust me, it gets expen­sive, espe­cial­ly for a 92,500-word tome such as Goliath Fall­en. That would make a strong case for going traditional.

In my case, there are some extra fac­tors to con­sid­er. As a non-native Eng­lish speak­er, I would­n’t risk query­ing agents before a pro­fes­sion­al edi­tor revis­es my man­u­script. So, I would have to cov­er the enor­mous expense that edit­ing rep­re­sents anyway.

Making a decision

The more I inves­ti­gate, the more com­plex the deci­sion becomes. So, before I go insane, I’ve decid­ed to take a dif­fer­ent angle: pick the one I find the most exciting.

I know for a fact that I suck at mar­ket­ing. On the oth­er hand, I also know that I suck even more at query­ing agents—I find the expe­ri­ence sim­ply daunting.

It’s a mat­ter of try­ing what I suck less at, I guess.

I find learn­ing about the self-pub­lish­ing process (mar­ket­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion, pric­ing, for­mat­ting, build­ing a team, etc.) very intrigu­ing. I feel exhaust­ed just think­ing about it, but it still seems like an appeal­ing expe­ri­ence. Even if my book crash­es and burns, I built all that myself, and that sounds quite rewarding.

With that said, I’ve cho­sen to self-pub­lish Goliath Fallen. 

I’ll have to ramp up my sav­ings to cov­er the expens­es, but it will all be worth it.

So, onto the next step: fig­ure out the budget! 

Stay tuned for updates as I go through this jour­ney from some­body who knows noth­ing about pub­lish­ing to (fin­gers crossed) land­ing on a best­seller list.

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