Which route to choose?

Traditionally publish, or self-publish?

Should I be traditionally published? Should I self-publish? That’s the big question.

As I embark on getting my memoir published, I’ve been thinking back to the days when I thought all I had to do was write the book, find a publisher, and away it would go.

Ah, the naivety!

At first, I wanted a traditional publisher. I hadn’t even considered the self- publishing option, as I thought “those books” were inferior and nobody read them except for the author’s immediate family. As I said, I was naïve.

Self-published books have come on leaps and bounds since I first cast my eye over my wild and crazy past, looking for a tale to tell. A tale where I am transformed by my experiences. Because all good memoir goes from the specific (what happened to me) to the universal (this is what I learned from it, and how it pertains to other people’s lives.)

I never expected it would take almost 5 years to get to this point. Even though, at least a year, or maybe more, the book sat in my cupboard, due to what someone said about it. Being told to cut my book by a third was more than I could handle at that time. I was crushed, especially as the person suggesting it was not an editor, but a fellow writer. Someone with no qualifications, in other words.

Fortunately for me, I recovered from that.

Honestly, I never expected to be such a shrining violet. I’d been published in magazines for years, so I thought I was emotionally tough. But I discovered, over my journey, that book writing and magazine writing are totally different animals, in terms of editing. They may both be words on paper, out in the world, for the public to read, but there the similarities end. Or at least that’s what I think about it.

Because magazine articles have a short lifespan, there is not the endless revision, the fussing over this word or that, as if time didn’t matter. Magazines have deadlines, and if you don’t come up with the goods, there is a gigantic hole for the editor to scramble to fill at the last minute. And you can be sure you’ll never get another piece in that magazine again. It is a business. It’s not, “let’s chase the butterflies until we have them perfectly aligned.”

Writing a book, on the other hand, can take as long as it takes. Words are edited, and then edited again, possibly by more than one editor. There are meetings, a whole gaggle of people at the publishing firm who are working on your book, before it becomes a reality. And even then, you don’t get through their doors at all without first securing an agent to trumpet how great your book is.

At least, most publishers only deal with agents.

An agent is, in essence, a salesperson. But the most important salesperson you’ll ever likely to encounter. It is the agent who takes your story and shops it around to publishers, convincing them that this is a fabulous story that they must publish. It has a great ready-made audience.

More importantly, it will make them money. Publishing books is a business, first and foremost. Without the profit involved, they will fold.

Because getting an agent is vital to getting accepted by a traditional publisher, it is incredibly difficult to get one. Agents are inundated with hopeful writers pitching to them, from sun up to sun down. I’ve heard agents can get 1,000 pitches a day. A day! What a tsunami!

It’s no wonder the whole process takes years.

Is self-publishing better? I don’t really know, other than I didn’t have the patience, nor the runway left, to find out. I’m too old to wait indefinitely for the illusive “yes”.

At least with self-publishing, you are in the driver’s seat. The choices are yours, rather than what the traditional publisher tells you. Of course, there’s always the chance that they know more about publishing than you do! The mistakes you make will be all yours.

For me, it had to be self-publishing, although it probably took me about two years to stop dithering about it.

Was I right? Was I wrong? I will find out when the book comes out in April or May this year. But I do know this, at least it’s done. The decision was made, the words are lining up, and off it goes into the world of readers.

The rest is up to the Hands of Fate.

What do you think about self-publishing versus the traditional publishers? Are you making that choice? What makes you choose one over the other? Are you like me, you don’t feel you have enough time to wait for the traditional route to pay off?

Please let us know in the comments.