#109 - Why Did You Choose to Self-Publish a Book?

Why did you choose to self publish a book? Hi, my name is Shelly Hitz and I help writers get their books out of their heads and onto paper with my book writing formulas and virtual writing retreats. So you can write words that outlive you. Self published books that fulfill your calling and reach more readers with your message. In each of my Ask Shelley segments, I promise to share at least one thing that will help you write, self publish and market your books so the message of your books can impact lives. So I received a question. Can you tell us how you got into writing and chose to self publish? I love this question. You know, we have so many opportunities today that we didn't have before. You know, self publishing is still a rather new thing, but it was in 2007 I started speaking with my husband at youth events. So he would take the guys, I would take the girls and we would share and encourage and I would share on topics of sexual purity and modesty and just all the different things, beauty and many times girls would come up to me and want counseling or ask me questions and I just never had enough time to talk with them all. And so God led me to start a website and I started writing website articles. And that was back in 2007, so that was long time ago. It was even before blogging was really.

Popular. I learned HTML and all the things, but started publishing these website articles. Well, the next year our friend Philip Telfer, he has the Ministry Media Talk 101 and my husband was part of that ministry for many years, but he had written and self published a book and he showed us a copy of his book and I was like, oh wow, this is a quality book, this is a real book. Because remember this is 2008, this was 15 years ago, and people weren't talking about self publishing. And I didn't realize you could get a quality book. And then I found out that at the time it was CreateSpace. Now it's Kindle Direct Publishing through Amazon. But at the time Amazon had CreateSpace which would not only you could upload your files for free, but they had the technology called Print on Demand. So you didn't have to buy thousands of copies of your book, you could just upload it to Amazon and even other retailers through their expanded distribution. But they would only print a book if someone purchased it. So it wasn't a ton of upfront money. And so I was able to compile all of those website articles I had been writing over the last year. I had no idea, but God was preparing me. He was Setting me up for this first book that would be birthed into the world in the fall, I think it was November of 2008 is when I published my first book, Mirror Mirror and my beautiful Looking deeper to find your true beauty. And I probably did everything wrong. And I've updated that book multiple times. I've updated the COVID had it reformatted, had it edited again twice. And all of the things but I did.

Was more of a ministry in the beginning, and I gave away more copies than I sold. But I chose to self publish because I just really believed it was what God was leading us to do for our ministry. So for us, writing and our books has been a ministry much more than it's been a business. Now we do make money and we do appreciate the book royalties that come in every month because it helps us to pay our bills. But for us, that's why we got into it and there's so much more control. You can get your book published so much faster. So you think about ministry like if you have to wait three to five years to get your books published through a traditional publishing contract, that's three to five years. Your book could be out there impacting people's lives. And at the times we were speakers, we had our own platform. And I, I feel pretty good with my, my marketing and so to, to have somebody else, you know, take my content and then still expect me to, to do all the marketing and then, you know, I would get a much smaller royalty from those book sales. It just never made sense to me. Like even today, if somebody came knocking on my door as a traditional publisher, I don't know that I would take the contract. I just don't know. I personally love self publishing now. We call it independent publishing. We've formed an independent publishing company and there's really easy ways that you can self publish. Like just publishing a short Kindle ebook is the quickest way to get started. You don't need an ISBN, you don't need a full book cover, just the front cover. You know, it's just inexpensive, it's easy. You don't have as many decisions and it's a great way to just dip your toe into self publishing. And so we teach that in Christian Book Academy. And so if you're interested in self publishing, we really are experts in this. We've done this for so many years and we can help you every step of the way. So we'd love for you to join us. Join us@christianbookacademy.com and I hope that that was just that was that was inspiring for you of just, you know, I call it the twists and turns of life. I was a physical therapist for 12 years and never in a million years thought that I would be doing what I'm doing today. Well, this year will mark the 12th year anniversary that we've had our business and we've both been in our business full time for 12 years. So now I've been doing this almost as long or as long as I did my previous career as a physical therapist. It's mind blowing, but it's a twist and turns of life. And God may have something amazing for you. You just never know what may happen or what doors will open or what things will come when you take that courageous step of faith. So I hope this has encouraged you. Thank you for asking. And I will talk to you next time. Buh. Bye.