Myths on Self-Publishing: The Truths and Consequences towards Book Marketing

In the vast and mostly challenging world of publishing, there are hundreds and even thousands of contradicting stories as to why the number of authors today who decide to self-publish their crafts is increasing. Why not? They have found a lot of reasons and advantages especially with the word “control” for their books.

We can dig dipper unto the usual reasons why do authors shift into self-publishing. Let’s find out what are mainly the myths and the truths behind them which affect self-published authors’ successes.

Myth #1: Self-Publishing only fits for Bad Writers.

“Very Bad Things” by Ilsa Madden-Mills

With the increasing popularity of self-publishing among authors, they now have that option to wait for two years or six months before their work can be considered for publication. Two years is the standard waiting period when an author chooses the traditional publishing while six months for self-publishing. When an author doesn’t want to wait that long in order for his book to be published, that doesn’t mean he is a bad writer. If it means that way, then the self-published book, “Very Bad Things” by Ilsa Madden-Mills can’t be featured as bestselling book by Goodreads, Amazon, and anywhere online.

The truth is that self-publishing used to be the place of an uncertain gamble for some authors who would pay a huge amount of money to print his book and fulfill his own orders. But today, things have changed with the Internet, digital readers, and the concept of print-on-demand (POD). Authors have also gone out with their own ways to promote their books and the fact that there are self-published books that sold millions of copies prove that these authors do not shift into self-publishing because of their quality issues as writers.

Myth #2: Readers are not interested with self-published books.

The truth is that all readers in all walks of life choose to read good books no matter if they are published traditionally or self-published. The reading public are, on the whole, also consumers like us who want to get the worth of every penny we spend. And so, even if a book is self-published yet good, informative, and interesting; people would love to purchase and read it.

As of the 3rd week of August 2013, self-published books, “Wicked Firsts,” by six independent authors: Elisabeth Naughton, Alexandra Ivy, Cynthia Eden, Laura Wright, Katie Reus and Joan Swan and “Ruin,” by Rachel Van Dyken are the first and second best-selling books featured at USA Today. In fact, this is not the first time that these authors have topped the list. This shows that when they were able to grab the readers’ interest towards their books from the very beginning, then the next time around would be easier for them to sell their books to these people. People would simply find them and buy their books because there is already trust built towards the quality of their work.

Myth #3: Standard quality of self-published books’ production is vividly low.

In the earlier period of self-publishing evolution, there might have been a visible inconsistency between the huge conventional publishing houses and self-publishing companies. But that is no longer true today.
Through the Print-on-Demand (POD) and e-books, and the power of the Internet, self-published authors are now having a lot of options that they can do for their books—professional editing, formatting, and cover art designing so that the quality of the books they want to self-publish can equal the quality of those that are traditionally published.

Myth #4: Most self-published authors can’t get their works into big chain book stores and that hinders their successes.

Long time ago, huge book stores were the only primary places where people can buy their favorite books and where students can purchase their textbooks. But that is no longer true today. In a recent poll about book buying habit of the readers conducted online in August 2013 by “Drowning in You” author, Rebecca Berto, 74% of her 104 respondents said that they prefer buying books online while 49% choose to read e-books.

This only shows that people nowadays buy books where they are comfortable of doing so without necessarily driving away from their homes just to look for bookstores. Further, younger generation of today generally prefers the comfort downloading and reading books through their computers and through the use of any other downloading program they are comfortable with.

Myth #5: Self-published authors are doing their own ways of promoting their books and that hinder their success.

Fact is that even the traditional publishers do ask authors to do tours to promote their books, interviews through newspapers and television, and book signings. Those writers who are going the traditional way of publishing their books are also asked to submit their book marketing plan.

It is therefore a must for every author to come up with a strategic book marketing plan because for any author, book promotions are important to drive book sales.

Many believe that all self-published authors only self-publish because they were rejected over and over again by big publishing houses and book agents from the traditional companies. Some have continued to think that way but these successful self-published authors I’ve mentioned prove that anyone can be successful when you choose to believe in yourself and the story you intend to unfold. Success in self-publishing doesn’t count on how many times you were rejected but rather what book marketing strategy do you do in order to achieve it.