#089 - Self-Publishing vs. Traditional Publishing

This is Shelly hitz from ChristianBookAcademy.com and I received a question about the difference between self publishing and traditional publishing and how to prepare for each. So they are very different. And I have a blog post on trainingauthors.com that goes into detail on that. You can just search the word independent publishing because that's what it's under the benefits of independent publishing. But we personally focus on and specialize in self publishing or independent publishing. And you know, some of the things that are amazing about it is you don't have to wait on anyone. You can go at the pace of God's grace. So as God leads you, you have the freedom to move forward and you can publish a book much quicker when you have self publishing than when you're using a traditional publisher. There's also a whole process that you go through with traditional publishing. Typically you'll need to work with a literary agent. And there's a whole process of coming up with a book proposal and doing all the things, and those are actually good things. And you know, if it doesn't work out for traditional publishing, you can use your book proposal to help you create a marketing plan to help you write and self publish the book and do what God has called you to do. But with self publishing, the main difference is that you're the project manager. So you are the one typically that's in charge of hiring the different outsourcers, the editor, the formatter, a book cover designer. Now you can hire someone that can do that work for you, and we give recommendations for you inside ChristianBookAcademy.com some of them are very affordable and they'll actually be like the project manager and lead you through the whole process, process. And that can be really helpful. And so even with self publishing, you can have someone else, you know, leading through the project. But typically, you know, you will hire someone. So you still have a team. You'll hire someone to edit your book, you'll hire someone to format it, you'll hire someone to do the book cover design. And you're not doing all of that yourself just because it's called self publishing. You have a team, but with a traditional publer publisher, they have their own team already. So they have the editor that you'll work with on their team, they have a formatter that you'll work with on their team, they have a book cover designer. And so one of the things with traditional publishing is you tend to have less control. So they will sometimes push back and say it has to be this way. And I've had a personal friend that said that they had to, you know, walk away from a traditional publishing contract because they were wanting to do things to their book that they did not feel that God was leading them to do. One person said that a really big traditional publisher wanted to cut their book like in, in half, more than half, and make it more like a gift book versus what they had originally written. And she prayed about it and God was like, no, you're, you're to have it be the way it is. And so she ended up self publishing that book and got some traditional publish publishing contracts later on, another friend, they were just wanting too much control over the content and it was going to change the message of really what he wanted to portray. And so he decided to self publish or independently publish. And so, you know, there's so many pros and cons with traditional publishing contracts. The way you prepare is to get a literary agent and to write a book proposal and then your literary agent will help you connect with publishers and you'll send that book proposal to those publishers and they'll decide yes or know, do they want to even consider your book? A great way to connect with literary agents and publishers is to go to writers conferences in person. Writers conferences. So those are some of the best ways to prepare for a traditionally traditional publishing contract and then for self publishing is just to know the steps, like to know like what it is that is required to self publish a book and then to have some recommendations for who to hire. And we can help you with that. We lead you through that entire process inside ChristianBookAcademy.com so we would love to have you join us there. But yeah, it's just there's, there is, especially with your first book, there's a lot to learn, there's a lot of research. But when you join a program like Christian Book Academy, we have it laid out for you so you don't have to do all the research. And then everyone's process is going to be a little bit different. So once you go through the process once, you will know how to do it for the next one. And I can almost guarantee you that you have more than one book in you. So this was just a broad overview. If you have more questions, let us know, contact us and we would love to hear from you. Supportrainingauthors.com but hopefully this was helpful and just gave you some some ideas of how to prepare for traditional publishing and self publishing and some of the differences.