In this blog post, we will be looking at the final part of my series about the pros and cons of assisted publishing and DIY self-publishing. We have already looked at the advantages and disadvantages of assisted publishing, as well as the advantages of DIY self-publishing. This time, it’s the turn of the downsides of using a DIY self-publishing method – why and when this might not be the best option for you and your book.
Of course, you will likely find that there are advantages and disadvantages of both methods for you, but hopefully, this series will help you to weigh up the relative pros and cons and decide what is most important to you and what you are prepared to compromise on.
To start off, let’s recap both methods – what they are and how they work. First of all, we will consider assisted publishing. This is a service offered by some companies that will prepare your book for publication, combining many of the services necessary.
What these services are specifically will obviously vary, according to which company you are using. They may also offer a number of packages, with each one including different services. Typical services offered by assisted publishing companies are cover design, formatting and possibly proofreading and various types of editing.
The second method is DIY self-publishing. This does not literally mean that you do all of the necessary work yourself, just that you find individual professionals for each service needed, then oversee their work yourself. You will also need to discuss with them what exactly you would like in terms of cover design, for example. In addition, you will need to be available to answer and deal with any issues that arise during their work, so it requires a lot more input on your part.
Takes a Lot of Time
So, what are the disadvantages of DIY self-publishing? Well, one is what is mentioned above – it is a lot more labour-intensive for you. Rather than just finding and vetting one company, as with assisted publishing, you will instead need to do this individually with each professional you find for work needed.
All of this makes it very time-consuming for you. In addition, once you have found all of the professionals you want to work with, you will need to be much more hands-on throughout the whole process. For example, you will have to be available for any questions or queries anyone has, whereas a lot more of this would be dealt with by the assisted publishing company if you chose this route.
You will also need to spend a lot more time planning in the first place if you choose a DIY method. Taking the cover art as an example, you will first need to consider what sort of cover you would like, looking at other covers in your genre, then prepare a brief based on this. In assisted publishing, they will be much more experienced in this and should be able to create you a cover with very little discussion required.
Also, if you do plan to do any of the tasks required yourself, this will take even more of your time! For example, you may decide to do the conversion from print to ebook, which will not only take a lot of time to do in the first place but will also require multiple checks to ensure your book is in the best shape possible for publication. You may decide to have a proofreader check this conversion for you, as it is never easy to check your own work.
You may also find that there are not that many tasks you can do yourself, as the whole publication process needs a wide variety of different skills. Even the bits that you can do yourself may not actually save that much money and will certainly be more costly in terms of your time.
Still Expensive
This leads well into another point – DIY publishing is still expensive. It shouldn’t cost as much as assisted publishing does, but it is easy for the costs of all the individual services to add up quicker than you thought. Of course, there isn’t the premium there is with assisted publishing for the company to source all the services; nevertheless, it is by no means cheap to get your book to a professional standard.
More Demanding
There is also the fact that DIY self-publishing is a lot more demanding for you. You will need to manage everything yourself, which means keeping on top of all the individual tasks that need doing. You will also need to organise and coordinate all of this so that everything comes together at the right time. For example, you will need to have had your manuscript edited before it is formatted, as correcting any errors can change how things appear on the page.
This can make things quite hard to juggle and will need a lot of your attention. It requires considerable planning to make sure everything goes smoothly. You will also be responsible for dealing with any queries from the professionals you have chosen and checking their work when it is done.
Wrapping Up
As you can see, there are some downsides to DIY self-publishing. Nevertheless, this can be a great way of doing things if you think you can manage it, with none of the typical risks of assisted publishing. Good luck with your book, however you decide to publish it.
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