Self Publish Your Novel

Why self publish a novel? Why not go it alone? Both very good questions, and ones I will try to provide the answers to in this section.

On the face of it, being your own boss might seem like a very attractive way of getting your novel in print.

After all, why settle for the small percentage of sales revenue given to you by your publisher (in the form of royalties) when you can keep all of the profits for yourself?

The answer, of course, is that there might not be any profits at all if you go about self publishing the wrong way - and 100% of nothing won't pay too many bills.

On the other hand, there have been plenty of successfully self-published novels, so it certainly isn't something you should discount until you have read the article on The Pros and Cons of Self Publishing a Novel.

Linked to Self Publishing is Vanity Publishing - and taking the "vanity" route is something you most certainly should discount unless you are very sure what you are doing. Why? Because while there are certainly some reputable vanity publishers out there, there are also a lot of "snake oil salesmen".

P.S. Building a website like Novel Writing Help is a huge undertaking. Whilst I would like every section to be as comprehensive as possible, the fact is that this section on publishing yourself (and to a lesser extent, the section on Publishing a Novel Conventionally) will remain relatively rudimentary until I find the time to research the subject thoroughly. In the meantime, if you think that publishing your own book might be something you want to pursue, check out this website (opens in new window).