Julie Broad says self-publishing works for most nonfiction authors, but skip it if you land a strong traditional deal with a five-figure advance, expect publishers to handle all marketing, or don't know your audience. Self-published books rose 40% year-over-year in 2020.
Questions this video answers
40% increase over the previous year.
December 27, 2019.
At least a five-figure advance.
KDP allowed authors to convert an ebook into a print version by pressing a button (making ebook→print publishing much easier).
Chapters
The stats are out and the number of self published books are up 40% over the previous year. With self publishing clearly becoming a mainstream way to publish, you might be thinking it's the best option for you to get your book out into the world. Well, maybe, but maybe not. Stick around and I'll explain. Hey, I'm Julie the book broad, an award winning author and the founder of a fantastic company called Book Launchers. You, your fabulous professional self publishing team helping you write, publish and sell nonfiction books that grow your business and make you money. Yeah, you heard that right. I run a company that helps you self publish and I'm saying maybe you shouldn't self publish. But let me explain. There are really three situations where I think you shouldn't self publish your book. If you're writing a nonfiction book, most of the time, I think you need to self publish. I talked about it extensively in this video right here. So let's get to it, shall we? Here are the three situations where you shouldn't self publish a book in 2020. Number one, the traditional book deal makes so much sense for your goals. If you want to be a New York Times bestseller, for example, and you're getting a sweet deal, and let me be clear, there are not very many sweet deals. The authors who do get these sweet deals are typically celebrities or they have a very strong following on social media or in their business. Even if you get a deal with a traditional publish, there are very few that I would categorize as juicy deals worth taking. For me, a deal that would meet the criteria of taking is someone is a deal that has at least a five figure advance. I get to keep the audiobook rights. Or if that's not going to fly, most contracts these days require audiobook rights to go to the publisher. But I would want some sort of a guarantee that they're going to produce that audiobook and I would want the international rights to my book. Most importantly, I want the right to use all content in the book without the publisher's permission or them getting any paper payment. For example, if I get the opportunity to turn my book into a TV show of some kind, I want to be fully free to pursue that on my own and contract that deal on my own. The advance is important for a few reasons, but the biggest is that if a publisher is advancing you five or six figures, they're extremely likely to put their marketing engines behind you, which is positive. You'd be shocked at how little marketing most traditional publishers do for the majority of their books. But the advance will also Give you money to invest in hiring some marketing power yourself so you can get great PR and marketing for your launch. You might think that's all in the traditional publisher, but it is actually on you. So if you get one of these sweet deals and it's a good fit for your goals, self publishing probably doesn't make sense. Number two, you want to just write the book and somebody else does the rest. So many authors think that they need a traditional book deal because they just want to write the book and somebody else will do the rest. The problem is that's not how a traditional deal works. Your book proposal is essentially your book marketing plan and if you can't show the publisher how you are going to sell books, they're not interested in signing you as an author. Trust me, while ultimately rejected me because they didn't think I had a big enough platform to sell books, I loved proving them so wrong by taking my book to number one overall ahead of Dan Brown and the Game of Thrones series. In Canada, where I lived at the time, they never had a niche nonfiction real estate book debut at number one on Amazon, so that felt good. But they didn't want me because they didn't think I'd sell enough books. So traditional book deals aren't going to work for you if you think you can just write the book and someone else does the rest. But self publishing isn't going to work for you either. You'll just join the ranks of all those authors who put a book on Amazon and sell less less than 100 copies and wonder why they didn't succeed. Let me be clear. Publishing whether you're self publishing or getting a traditional book deal is crazy hard work. And the hard work really begins when your book is done. Hiring help is smart, but even a company like Book Launchers can't do it all for you. We work with you to market your book, but you still have to show up for those podcast interviews, prep the talk and deliver it when you get a speaking gig. And you are the one who has to build a platform to surround your book and your business. If you don't want to do that, publishing isn't for you. Number three, the final situation where you shouldn't sell Publish a book in 2020. You're not clear on your goals. You don't have a specific reason why you want to write a book. And this is killer because a book is big time energy and money investment. It feels amazing to be an author and know that you've done something that so few people have done. But let's be clear. You're going to put at least a year of your life into writing and publishing a book, and probably another year into marketing it. Let's make sure you're clear on why you're writing the book and that you've taken the time to match your goals with your message. Make sure if you want to get paid speaking gigs that your book topic showc you with a message people will pay to hear. I talked about that in this video. Are you writing the wrong book? If you want media attention, make sure there's a strong hook. If you want a funnel for your business, make sure you're speaking to your ideal client and you're addressing a problem they are looking to solve. If you're not clear on why you're writing, you're going to spin in circles and waste time. Or worse, write the wrong book for you. I love self publishing because I love to control my content. Be the one that benefits when my book does awesome. And your reader. Well your reader will never know you self publish. If you do it well, they don't care if you worked with a big publishing company or not. They only care what your book is going to do for them. So the trick is to make sure your book is so good the thought that you self publish doesn't even enter their mind. In fact, I've had calls from people asking for me to connect them to my publishing company because the books are so good they didn't know they were self published. Imagine their surprise when I say you're on the phone with the president of the publishing company. Self publishing in 2020 is the best way to go for most nonfiction authors. But in these three situations I don't think you should do it. And that stat that I said at the begin beginning that self published books are up 40% over the previous year. True stat, but you should know that the driving force behind that was a single change by KDP where they basically allowed authors with an ebook to push a button and have it turn into a print version of the book. So the number was good for effect, but maybe didn't mean what you thought it meant. Alright, back to the topic of the video. What do you think? Are there situations where you should not self publish? Share that in the comments below. And when you comment the day a video is released, you'll be entered to win some sweet book launcher swag like this. Oh so soft journal like this. Tip. Smash that thumbs up button. Go ahead, try it. I'll wait. It feels so good, right? And make sure you've subscribed to the channel and turn those notifications on so we can hang out every Tuesday and Friday when new videos come out. If you want to learn the nitty gritty about self publishing versus traditional publishing, check out this video right here. Or if you want to make sure that you're not writing the wrong book, this video is perfect for you. Go ahead, choose the video you want to see next. I can't wait to see you.
