Why I decided to self-publish my next book
Dorka and me taking a break from Mardi Gras 2024 festivities to work on our first book collaboration
When I tell people I’m working on self-publishing a book, I typically get one of two responses:
Oh, that’s cute, no further questions.
Why would you self-publish? I’m sure you can find a publisher. Have you tried all the academic presses?
Self-publishing carried a stigma back in 2008 when the traditional New York publishing house W. W. Norton published my first book, Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table. Stigma isn’t the only reason I never considered self-publishing Gumbo Tales. Avenues of self-publishing in those days were mysterious, expensive, and scant. Your choices were to pay a vanity press a lot of money, or a non-vanity printing house less money. Either way, self-published books of that era looked nowhere near as professional as bookstore books; “distribution” for self-published books meant selling out of the trunk of your car. (Selling books from the trunk of your car is a valid business move, but it’s difficult to build a readership when it’s the only available business move.)
What a difference sixteen years, and a whole lot of technology, made in the publishing world. In the current market, anyone with a story to tell and access to a computer and a bank account can publish a book and find an audience. And there exist myriad ways of doing it now in addition to the traditional agented publishing route: DIY on platforms like Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) and IngramSpark; with the help of a book shepherd or book producer; with a hybrid publisher; with a small publisher; or with a vanity press (beware: vanity presses have gotten more predatory). There’s a lot of gray area between the options in that list, and some overlap, and I'm sure I've omitted some legitimate alternatives.
Self-publishing still carries a stigma, and perhaps it always will. I get it: I love traditional publishing too. My editor at W. W. Norton, Maria Guarnaschelli, bought Gumbo Tales when it was nothing but a proposal with one sample chapter. If she hadn’t bought it, that book probably would have remained a proposal forever. I wasn’t ambitious or industrious or wealthy enough to bring it to print myself at that time. Life would have gotten in the way, I would have moved on to other projects and jobs, and the hole in my heart where unrealized dreams go would be a little bigger. Instead, Gumbo Tales is still in print, and my heart is full and warm with gratitude to Maria and W. W. Norton—and to the whims of history, which put me on a path to a book deal with a New York publishing house before words like “platform,” “followers,” and “TikTok” were a thing.
Maria used to check in with me from time to time to ask whether I was working on a second book. The answer was always no. I had a baby the year after Gumbo Tales was published, and I turned out not to be the kind of writer who could do early motherhood and books at the same time. During the last conversation I remember having with Maria, prior to her passing in 2021, she was characteristically honest and to the point.
“You need to start taking yourself seriously as a writer,” she said. “If you don’t, no one else will.
I’m pretty sure Maria did not have self-publishing in mind when she told me I needed to take myself seriously as a writer. Which is okay. It’s been useful to have Maria’s voice in my head as I’ve settled into the decision to self-publish. When the Maria in my head pushes back on that decision, and I when resist her pushing back and forge ahead with my self-publishing plan anyway—that’s me taking my writing seriously.
Authors like me come to self-publishing for many reasons. In her (self-published) workbook, The Publishing Workbook for Independent Authors: Your Step-By-Step Guide to Professional Book Design, Production, and Distribution, self-publishing guru Carla King lists six possible reasons for self-publishing, and all of them resonate with me.
Here are Carla's six reasons, in boldface, with commentary pertaining to my own decision to self-publish:
Last resort: When an attempt to get an agented book deal fails.
In June of 2021 I pitched my idea for a craft book aimed at amateur memoir and life story writers to the agent who helped me sell Gumbo Tales, Esmond Harmsworth, President at Aevitas. Esmond and I have stayed in touch over the years, and while I’ve never presented him with another book proposal that excited him, I trust his judgement as a reader and his sense of the marketplace completely.
While Esmond's response to my craft book proposal was warm and encouraging, as always, at the time I heard only the upshot: that my lack of a platform in the genre would make it a tough sell. However, when I dug through my emails the other day and revisited our exchange, I had new eyes for the broader message in what he actually wrote back then. Here’s an excerpt:
“Books like this tend not to be published by the major publishers unless the author has a huge platform . . . If you have not built up a brand like that, then a book like this will interest regional and smaller publishers only. And the advances tend to be really low. A book like this can backlist for years, which is great, but it usually won’t sell all that many copies in its first year . . . Some publishers may feel that the storytelling apps have sucked a lot of the oxygen out of this space, too.”
He wrote more, but you get the gist. He didn’t reject the idea of representing the book, but he had reservations. Smart reservations. And Esmond's reservations prompted me to reevaluate my goals for the book and ask myself an important question:
Is working with a publishing house the best way to meet my publishing goals for this book?
Notice how this question is the flip of what most writers trying to get traditional book contracts ask themselves:
How can I make my book (and my platform) meet the goals of a publishing house?
I’m not cynical about traditional publishing. There’s a book on my long-term to-do list that I desperately hope a traditional publisher will buy one day—because a traditional publisher will best position me to meet my goals for that future book. As for my life story writing craft book, Esmond's lukewarm and realistic response put that project on pause and eventually set me on the long, exciting path of self-publishing.
Speed to market: When you want to publish a book quickly.
The timeline for traditional publishing is two years, and that clock starts ticking after you’ve signed on with an agent, and after that agent sells your book to a publishing house, and then after that publishing house’s ancient internal machinery finally produces a contract. Fiction writers generally need to have a completed manuscript before landing an agent. Finding an agent itself can take years.
With Gumbo Tales, I signed a book contract in the early spring of 2005. It was a full three years to publication, in part because Hurricane Katrina got in the way. You can count on something getting in the way with every publishing avenue.
There are exceptions to the two-year timeline. For example, it’s possible for authors to pitch their books directly to smaller publishers, without an agent. You’re at the whims of small publishers’ schedules and quirks when you do that, though. They aren’t obligated to get back to you. You may hear from them next week or next year or never.
I have a coaching client who recently landed a no-advance deal with a traditional publisher who agreed to put his book on a fast track. It’s a small publisher with flexibility, and the author has some good reasons for needing the book to be in print sooner rather than later, so it was a wonderful stroke of luck and timing that the two parties found each other.
I have another client who found a small publisher for her poetry book. Very few poets have agents—poetry is even less lucrative than other writing genres—and she isn’t one of them. Her book will be published in a few months, but that’s after a year of unexplained delays. She’s grateful her book will finally be in print, but the lack of communication and control has zapped her excitement for its release.
After reading Esmond’s response to my proposal, I took time to evaluate my options. Among my realizations was that the two-year-plus track didn’t jibe with my goals for my craft book. My greatest impetus for writing it was that I had a lot to say on the topic; I knew from positive student responses in my life story writing classes that what I had to say had value. The second-greatest impetus for writing it was that I hoped it would establish me as an expert in the field of amateur memoir and life story writing. I wanted the book to help build my platform and to drive more editing (and now, coaching) business my way. Two years felt like too long to wait.
That, of course, was nearly three years ago, and the book still isn’t in print. As I said, you can count on something getting in the way with every publishing avenue. In this case, a few things got in the way:
I was still under the sway of self-publishing’s stigma, and it took some time for me to fully embrace being that author.
I didn’t know the first thing about self-publishing, and so while the seed of inspiration for it was planted in my book brain, I didn’t know where to turn for fertilizer.
I got distracted for a while by a colleague who thought she might want to turn my book idea into an online course. This seemed to solve #1: I wouldn’t need to be a self-published author after all! Our professional relationship has continued to grow, but ultimately this colleague's own business goals didn’t include my work in that way.
Yes, a desire to quickly get my book to market influenced my decision not to pursue traditional publishing, but my experience of self-publishing taking longer than expected is typical. That’s in part because when you’re in control of the publishing process, you get to (have to) set the timeline. While it’s taking my book longer than I'd originally hoped, the book has evolved in positive ways during the waiting period, and I’m grateful I've been able to allow that evolution.
Business Booster: When a book is an extension of a business.
I do see my book as an extension of my business, and as the foundation of a (I’m about to use a word that makes me blush) brand. My original motivation for writing a book aimed at amateur memoirists and life story writers was to organize and disseminate the wealth of knowledge I’d gathered on the topic over my years leading an adult writing class called Composing Your Life Story. Over the course of the book’s pre-publication life, I’ve established a nice side business as an editor and a writing coach. It’s clear from my current vantage point that getting the book into print will be useful to continuing to grow that branch of my business. That added layer of motivation—brand-building—hasn’t changed the book’s content, but it has helped me focus more precisely on who my audience is and what advice that audience might want from a book like mine.
Cost: When an author can’t afford to pay for help.
Thanks to my editing and coaching work, my business account is a little flusher than it was when I first conceived of my book, but only a little. All along the way, economics has driven my decision to self-publish, and to do every step of the process I can manage to figure out myself—versus paying a hybrid publisher, hiring a book shepherd or book producer, or engaging with gig workers (something I may yet do when I’m in the book promotion phase).
It’s important to say, however, that even when you’re doing as much work as possible yourself, making a professional self-published book costs real money. Editors, a proofreader, ISBN numbers, a PCIP block, cover design, interior formatting, software for researching your book’s metadata and categories, webinars and books and classes to help you navigate a realm of publishing that’s changing every day—the expenditures add up. Yes, a self-published author earns higher royalties on books sold, but I’ll need to work hard to sell enough books to recoup my costs and get to the profit-earning stage.
One thing I figured out early on, which gave me the courage to dive in and eased my financial burden significantly, was that a friend with some design experience and expertise in the visual arts was willing to walk the path of self-publishing with me. I met Dorka Hegedus, a professional photographer, at a parenting center (or was it at Whole Foods?) in New Orleans when we were both new mothers. Over the years we’ve worked together on oral history projects for the Southern Foodways Alliance. We’ve cooked together and fed each other countless meals. We're project people. I knew Dorka’s work ethic and all-in style of attacking creative projects well enough to embrace her willingness to create a book with me.
Not having to hire a designer for the cover or interior formatting represents a huge savings—and that savings is allowing me to devote capital to the level of professional editing that’s important to me. (Yes, editors need editors.) A bonus is that my book will contain Dorka's artfully considered black-and-white photos, something I doubt I would have invested in without Dorka’s partnership. I can't speak for Dorka here, but I hope the publication of our book will help elevate her photography and design business.
Control: When you want total control.
When an agented author signs a contract with a traditional publisher, the publisher generally has control over what happens to the book for the duration of the contract, which is on the spectrum of forever. I don’t have control over changing a grammatical mistake in Gumbo Tales, or adding a chapter to it, or doing an audiobook, or keeping it in print (beyond doing my part to make sure it keeps selling). That arrangement has worked well for me with that book. Like most authors, I was more interested in writing the book than in the nuts and bolts of publishing it, and I earned a modest advance, so happy day.
The deeper I get with this current book, though, the more pleased I am that I have total control, even beyond the mechanics of how it’s made. The greatest advantage to date to our having total control over this project is that when Dorka and I decided it would be optimal to turn my one book into two books, we were able to make that decision and begin executing a two-book plan that very day, without getting the okay from anyone else. I’ll go further into our reasons for turning one book into two in a future blog post, but for a teaser, here are the two titles:
How to Begin Writing Your Life Stories: Putting Memories on the Page
A Year of Tips and Prompts for Memoir and Life Story Writers: Putting More Memories on the Page
A few more reasons I’m happy to have total control of these two books:
With Dorka’s photographs and aesthetic touch, they will be beautiful books to hold, visually pleasing. But photographers and photographs cost money. A publisher may have been reluctant to spend extra on a nobody like me. Thankfully that’s a battle I don’t have to wage.
If my agent had sold the original book three years ago when I sent him my proposal, it would have turned into a good book but a lesser book. As I’ve been able to take my time with it, first by necessity and then by choice, my original idea has had a chance to breathe. Dorka and I have extended the publication dates a few times, which we can do because we’re in control.
While I hope to sell lots of books to strangers who find them through online searches and in bookstores, I imagine most sales will result from direct(ish) contact with readers: through word of mouth, through my classes and clients, through the workshops I intend to lead, through direct sales at fairs and festivals and conferences, and from selling them out of the trunk of my car. I like the idea of earning maximum profits from a book I’m so actively selling.
Half of the second, bigger book will consist of writing prompts for amateur memoirists and life story writers. It’s important to me to be inclusive with my prompts—more inclusive than the cookie-cutter prompts I’ve encountered in online programs like Storyworth, and in the kinds of life story writing workbooks I see on bookstore shelves. Every week in my classes I hear something new in a piece of student writing that broadens how I write my prompts. As I expect this broadening to continue, I’m relieved I will have total control over releasing a second edition of the book if in a few years I realize my prompts haven’t aged well.
I don’t envision either book as a one-and-done endeavor. I see them as the foundation for my business and (cough) brand, and I want total control over what comes next: a workbook, a journal, an online course, an audiobook. Whatever it is, I don’t want to negotiate with a publisher about how and when to produce related materials.
Here's Dorka's input on the benefits of having total control:
"We get to make something new. If we paid someone to do this, they would do a good enough job, but they would do it theirway. Doing it ourselves allows us to push boundaries, spend more time on elements of the book we care the most about without worrying about cost (beyond our own time). We can make a book that we believe will appeal to the audience we envision."
Control is its own burden, but in the case of these books, I’m happy to have it.
Experimentation: To dip your toe into the publishing business.
I didn’t know I would enjoy learning about the publishing business when I first set out to get my next book in print; discovering my inner entrepreneur has been the most surprising, and rewarding, aspect of the process so far. Self-publishing is a moving target, super dynamic, changing at the pace of technology—which in the age of generative AI is a game of whiplash. It’s possible I’ll tire of keeping pace with the self-publishing market. I’m analog by nature. But, for now, I’m enjoying the novelty and wonkiness of it.
Plus, learning the self-publishing trade is good for my business. Most of my coaching clients are first-time authors. Many of them will wind up self-publishing. I love the idea of being able to better guide them in their own decision-making processes. Understanding the world of self-publishing at least as well as I understand traditional publishing is the best way for me to be of service. I'm currently in the process of becoming a certified book publishing professional through the Nonfiction Authors Association.
If you're interested in learning more about self-publishing, check out Carla King at selfpubbootcamp.com. Her master course and the workbook I mentioned above have been incredibly helpful resources for me.
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