Publishing & Your Dripping Faucet

DIY, Hire an Expert, or Hybrid?

Most of our personal and work projects aren’t rocket science, so we actually have a choice of how much we do ourselves or hire out. Whether it’s a dripping faucet, creating a website, creating a garden, or launching a space shuttle (wait, that one is rocket science!) you have options galore for how to find help. There are consultants for every imaginable topic, instructional videos, webinars, books, or a quick local search to find someone to come and fix that drip.

Right now, my big project is deciding how to publish my book. As I mentioned in my last blog post, there are three main publishing options: Self-publishing, hybrid publishing, or a traditional publishing house.

Want to take a look and see how my process could help with your leaky faucet?

DIY

Pros - As you can guess, the more work you do yourself, the least costly the project will be. And another added benefit is that you will know a lot about how your sink, website, garden, or book works, which can benefit you in the long run.

Cons - The project will likely take a lot of your time, and the learning curve may be quite steep.

In DIY self-publishing, it’s relatively inexpensive to get your book published but you have to learn how to format your book, find a self-publisher, hire a cover designer... and you are on your own for marketing and promoting. Self-publishing is not free; at a minimum you have to pay for an editor and proof-reader (see all the potential costs below). And you won’t have access to typical book distribution channels so your book may not be widely available.

The good news: you get to keep the most royalties - up to 70% of each sale!

Hybrid

Pros - Knowing something about how your thing works is important, so hiring someone who can guide you, or do parts of the project, is the perfect solution. When I was converting my van, I did most of the work myself after watching YouTube videos or reading manuals. But when it came to the electrical system, I wanted someone to hook it up and test it to make sure I wasn’t going to electrocute myself. Hybrid at its best!

Hybrid publishers are typically ‘expats’ from the traditional publishing field and know how the industry works. They can provide lots of guidance to an author, and do the final steps of proofreading, design and formatting in house. You, the author, get a larger percentage of each book sale (you can expect 25-50% royalties on print books, up to 70% royalties on ebooks). Oh, and they have standard distribution channels so can get your book into book stores. Big plus!

Cons – You are going to pay for the services of professionals. Sometimes it’s not as cheap as you expect, even if they are only doing a fraction of the job for you.

Hybrid publishing costs vary widely: $5,000-20,000. They don’t perform all of the functions of a traditional publishing house, and you often have to pay for their services up front.

Hire an Expert

Pros – If you pay someone to do the entire project for you, you save time and brain cells. And you usually have some guarantees that they will do it right.

In traditional publishing, the publishing house typically takes your book and decides on the title, formatting, and cover so you don’t have to worry about any of that. They may give you an advance, or at least not charge to publish your book.

Cons – This option is either going to cost the most - or return the least - to your wallet.

With traditional publishing, you may not pay up front, but your royalty payments will be smaller since the majority of sales will go back to the publishing house. You also give up a fair amount of control – they choose the title, book cover, and many editing decisions. And they offer no guarantees on sales, marketing or promotion, or doing a second edition.

Be sure to review your contract carefully when you are handing over a project to someone else. Be certain about what you are paying for, what is included, what is excluded, guarantees or warranties. Most consumers are surprised by something they expected but wasn’t included in the contract!

Determining what is most important to you - time, money, or know-how - will help you find the right balance and make the best decision for whatever you trying to accomplish.

Curious how much it costs to Self-publish a book?

Developmental editor - $1500+

Copy/line editor - $600-1200

Proofreader - $500-800

Book cover designer - $300+

Book formatting - $500-1000

Marketing - $50-$1000

Total: $3000-4500 to self-publish

Go give a local author some love for figuring out how to get their book in your hands!