Is Self-Publishing the Best Path for Today’s Creators?

Lauren: Hi everyone, thanks for joining us for episode number two of Publish & Prosper. We've made it past the milestone of episode number one. 

Matt: Yay. 

Lauren: I assume that you're all applauding too, so thank you. 

Matt: All five of you. 

Lauren: Thank you for that enthusiastic round of applause from the five of you that are listening, four of whom are coworkers that I've strong-armed into listening. 

Matt: The other one's my mom, by the way. 

Lauren: Probably true. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Hi, Mom. 

Lauren: Today we're gonna talk about why self-publishing is the best path for today's creators, which, you know, obviously we're a little biased, but I – 

Matt: What's a creator?

Lauren: What's a creator? 

Matt: Yeah, I noticed you didn't say author. 

Lauren: Well, creators are all kinds of creative types, thank you. 

Matt: Got it. 

Lauren: Yeah, we don't just say author. We've done that a lot around here. We don't really just say ‘author,’ because not all people that are publishing books, or that consider publishing books, or that maybe should be publishing books, would necessarily consider themselves authors. 

Matt: That's right. Just checking. 

Lauren: How would you define a creator? 

Matt: You did a great job. I would say creators, anybody that's creating content for the purposes of either selling that content or using that content to grow their brand or business. 

Lauren: That is probably a better definition than the one I gave. So…

Matt: Nah. 

Lauren: We'll stick with that. 

Matt: They're basically the same. 

Lauren: That's so true. Hashtag creative type. That's what I just said. 

Matt: Yep, exactly.

[1:50]

Lauren: It's fine. So, I think that before we really start talking about why self-publishing is the best, which it is, we probably need to establish what are the options for publishing a book. 

Matt: Mhm. Yeah.

Lauren: I'm going to kick us off with the one that most people think of when they think of publishing a book, which is traditional publishing. The full experience of publishing, where you're pitching a book to an agent, who is pitching a book to a publishing house, where a dedicated team of in-house editors, designers, and publicists will handle most of – but not all of – the production and sale of your book. 

Matt: Do I have to have an agent?

Lauren: The majority of the publishers these days, yes, require it. There are still some that will accept unagented submissions, but the majority of the publishers – including, I believe, all five of the big five – do require an agent in order to submit a manuscript. 

Matt: Okay, yeah.

Lauren: Which is one of the barriers to entry. When we talk about, you know, whether or not traditional publishing is accessible to creators or authors, or aspiring creators and authors, one of the many barriers to that is that most of the publishing companies will not accept an unagented manuscript. So, first you have to find an agent to represent you, which is not easy. Then your agent will pitch it to editors at the publishing companies, who then have to turn around and pitch the book to their internal sales team. So there's multiple steps along the way where somebody can say, ‘nope, we're not taking that, but thanks for trying.’ If you’re lucky. 

Matt: And why do they pitch it to the sales team? 

Lauren: Because the sales team has to decide whether or not it's marketable and whether or not it's sellable. It could be the best book in the world, but if a publishing house thinks ‘no one's going to buy this,’ why would they buy it? 

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Lauren: I think I've talked about this, I can't remember at this point, but I do have a background in working in traditional publishing. So this is not coming out of left field. I do have some insight into… 

Matt: While Lauren does live in left field, this particular set of information, this knowledge base is not coming from left field is what you're saying.

Lauren: Yes, exactly. 

Matt: Perfect. Yes, just thought I'd clarify for the listeners – all five of them. 

Lauren: Maybe we have six now!

Matt: Possibly. Or we might have just scared one away, and now we only got four. 

Lauren: Please don't ghost us. It's fine. 

Matt: So it sounds like there's a lot of barriers to entry for traditional publishing. What would make somebody want to pursue that path in this day and age especially as a first-time author/creator/ writer?

Lauren: Honestly? Clout, mostly. Yeah for a lot of us, that – including me, I'm totally including myself. I'm not knocking traditional publishing. 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: If I was offered a book deal tomorrow, I would take it in a heartbeat. 

Matt: Would you? 

Lauren: Oh, absolutely. 

Matt: For the clout? 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Oh. Any other reason why you would take it if you were offered one? 

Lauren: Because I don't have the skill set to do all the things that we're going to talk about now. 

Matt: Oh, all right. 

Lauren: No, actually, the more that I learn about self-publishing, the more that I know that I probably could do it, because I think anybody can do it. I think anybody has the skill set or the means or the ability to self-publish a book successfully. I've wanted to be a writer since I was like six and I've wanted to be a traditionally published New York Times bestselling author since… 

Matt: Well I think that makes sense. We talked about how you live in left field so... 

Lauren: Right. I live in the magical dreamland where writing queer contemporary romance is going to somehow get me on the New York Times bestseller list. 

Matt: Eh, maybe one day. 

Lauren: Not in this world. 

Matt: Oh yeah. Sorry. 

Lauren: It’s fine. 

[5:22]

Matt: So traditional publishing is at one end of the spectrum. We'll go to the other far end of the spectrum in terms of publishing, and we'll talk about self-publishing for a second, because there's a middle of the spectrum as well. You know, the other end of that spectrum is self-publishing, which is the focus of today's episode. Unlike traditional publishing, self-publishing is basically you are controlling all of those facets that Lauren alluded to earlier that a traditional publisher might take on. i.e. the editing and formatting and design, some of the marketing, and then the sales, especially the sales. They're most interested in that. 

In self-publishing, you're kind of in control of all that. You're acting as almost like a subcontractor for your project, or a contractor, I should say. So hopefully you're not trying to do all those things yourself, but when you are self-publishing, you're in charge of all those things. Or I should say you're in control of those things, which most people find to benefit. Some not so much, but it's not as scary as it sounds. There are so many great freelancers out there that can help with those things. So you in essence, as a self published creator would be sort of controlling that process. You would act as the contractor. You'd find yourself an editor, a designer, any of those other types of activities, if you are not good at them. And even if you think you are good at them, I would, I would definitely recommend, you know, finding yourself a good editor and a good designer to work with. And if you're not very inclined to be on the high end of the marketing spectrum, then you should also find someone to help you with some of the marketing. There's a lot of resources out there, obviously, too, that are free that can help with that. 

But self-publishing, again, is basically the DIY version of publishing. And so the barriers to entry, as such, are pretty much zero. Anybody can self-publish. The distinction between a good self-published book and a bad one, A. is in the eye of the beholder or the reader, but B. usually boils down to how well you execute on those things we just talked about. And so, you know, some people would say, that's definitely the path for me. I want to be able to control everything. I don't want to hand over a manuscript I worked really hard on to have somebody else kind of chop it up, tear it apart, maybe make it better, maybe make it worse, but in the end, I lose a lot of creative control. Others would be a little, uh, trepidatious about entering into something like that. 

At the end of the day, it's really good for those who want to maintain that creative control, probably in the end, make more money, uh, depending on who you are. Obviously if you're, you know, Barack Obama, you're not going to make more money self-publishing – although you could, arguably, but I'm sure you're gonna make more through a traditional publisher. But if you're creating, you know, content for other types of purposes, or writing a lot of fiction or things like that, self-publishing is a great avenue. And why you would want to use that, again, is some of the stuff we're gonna get into shortly. But for this particular conversation self-publishing is the other end of the spectrum, you know, far at the other end from traditional. I think, Lauren, we’ll let you talk about where the middle of that spectrum is, and what the differences are for that one. 

[8:09]

Lauren: Yeah, so kind of in between – maybe, perhaps, the hybrid of traditional publishing and self-publishing – is hybrid publishing. It offers kind of a mix of the two experiences. So it does have similar in-house services like traditional publishers do, where they will usually have an in-house team to help you with editing, formatting, design, maybe even the sales and marketing and stuff like that, depending on what kind of hybrid publisher you wind up working with. They do also have some of the barriers, not quite as robust as the traditional publishers, but you will definitely find hybrid publishers that require that you submit a manuscript or at least a treatment probably, before they will accept a contract with you, because they wanna make sure that you're actually serious about what you're writing and also that it's not so beyond the pale that all the help in the world wouldn't make it sellable. But definitely not the same level of gatekeeping that you would find in traditional publishing. 

Matt: Right. So with hybrid, you could submit your manuscript. You don't have to have an agent. 

Lauren: Yes. Yeah. Also, beyond that, I would consider this a barrier to entry, potentially – hybrid publishing usually has a cost associated with it. You are usually paying for the services that you are contracting. You are contracting a company to do these things for you, which you are paying them to do. As opposed to traditional publishing, you're not paying for those services. That's part of your contract when you get a contract from the publishing companies. They are providing those services for you. A hybrid publisher, you are paying them to do those things for you.

Matt: Right

Lauren: So there is a slight barrier to entry in that there is a price tag attached to it. If that's not an object for you, if you have more money than you do time, and if this is something that you want to do, if you want to be a published author, or if you want to get your book out there to relate to your brand or to grow your brand or do something like that, you don't have the time to do all that work yourself, but you have the money to pay someone else to do it, then great. Not a barrier to entry for you, but it might be for some people. 

Matt: Yeah, no, agreed. And I think that the pricing varies so widely from hybrid publisher to hybrid publisher, and we can get into the whole sort of deep rabbit hole of what's the difference between a hybrid publisher and a vanity publisher, which we won't get into right now. But I think what we will say about hybrid publishing is it can be a very useful avenue for people, again, especially if you have the money to pay a hybrid publisher and you don't have the time to manage these things on your own. And that's, you know, we're seeing that more and more these days with people bridging the gap between self-publishing and hybrid publishing because they do have a little money they can throw towards that to help sort of speed the process along and make sure that they finish with a final product that they're really happy with, so. Hybrid publishing is not a bad thing at all, and as long as you do your homework and really research the potential publishers, hybrid publishers, you're going to use, then I think it can be a very good thing and a very time saving tool to use or path to publishing. 

[11:09]

Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. That should be the case across the board. Definitely when it comes to hybrid publishing, you should do your research, do your homework, vet your publishers thoroughly. But with all of these, with any publishing path that you take, no matter how you decide to move forward, you should be doing your research ahead of time. You should be…you should have an idea of what your goals are, and what you want out of the publishing experience and what you're hoping to get, what you're hoping to achieve, whether it's for you or your business or whatever it is. And you should make sure that you commit to a publishing path that will help you accomplish those goals. 

Matt: Yeah, definitely. And the last thing we'll say about this is, by no means was this an exhaustive comparison or deep dive into the paths to publishing. There's so much more to it when you really want to start researching which path is best for you. Hopefully by the end of this episode, you know that it's self-publishing, but if you want to dive deeper into the various paths, I think the best and most thorough and objective resource that you're gonna find out there on the internet is Jane Friedman's Paths to Publishing document. It is free, you can Google search it, find it. She does update it pretty regularly and it's a great resource and we'll probably go ahead and try to link to it in the show notes as well. 

Lauren: Yeah, I will definitely drop a link to that in the show notes. There's also going to be a slightly less comprehensive and exhaustive and probably less thoroughly researched blog post from the Lulu blog that I wrote a few years ago that is comparing the traditional publishing and self-publishing journeys. 

Matt: Cool.

Lauren: So if you want a more bite sized version of that…but I would definitely check out the Jane Friedman one. It's a really great resource and it's super informative. 

[12:45]

Matt: Yeah, definitely. So based on that, let's get back into the main topic here. And why do we think that self-publishing is the best option for creators, authorpreneur, people who are really looking to, to start to monetize their content and use their content for purposes of growing their brand, business, bank accounts, whatever that might be.

Lauren: I just really love that Matt unironically said the word authorpreneur. 

Matt: I don't know where that came from. I'm not even a huge fan of that word, although I like what it implies and what it means. And I don't even know how well that word, that term, caught on in the industry. I think for a little while people were using it, and some people might still use it. I don't hate it, but yeah, that's weird that it just came out. 

Lauren: I think it makes the point quite thoroughly.

Matt: Sure, I don't use it very often, which is probably why you pointed that out. So thank you. 

Lauren: No, I know, it was great. We just had a whole conversation at lunch about different words and phrases that we just can't bring ourselves to use because we're too old to be that trendy. 

Matt: That’s true, very true. 

Lauren: And then Matt just turned around and whipped out ‘authorpreneur’ without thinking twice about it. 

Matt: Let me pull up ChatGPT and find a suitable alternative for the word authorpreneur so Lauren stops browbeating me.

Lauren: No, it's great. I think it's very applicable. I just didn't expect it to happen. 

Matt: Fine. 

Lauren: It's fine. Anyway, back to the question at hand, why is self-publishing the best option for you? And I think I already said this a little bit, but bears repeating. It depends on what your goals are. But I think that a majority of the goals that we know just from talking to creators, authors, people that have published with us or are interested in publishing with us and asking them why they published, they had a lot of different reasons and a lot of those reasons, we all agree self-publishing was the best fit for them. So let's talk about some of those goals and why they would be a good fit for self-publishing. 

[14:45]

Matt: Yeah, and I think this one is especially relevant to probably all of the people who are listening and anybody out there creating content, regardless of the format, but typically these days one of our biggest goals as creators is to grow an audience. And more importantly, you know, to turn that audience into what we would consider fans or super fans, right? People who are going to give you money for your content at some point or some stage in that journey. But initially you have to do the work and find the ways to build that audience and attract those fans – or followers, I should say – and then how to turn them into fans…and then how to turn them into stark raving mad fans, right? 

Lauren: As a lifelong diehard fangirl…yes. That is always, the goal is to turn your people into people that would stay up until midnight because you're dropping a re-recorded version of an album that already exists at midnight tonight, even though you have to be up at 5 AM for a flight tomorrow. 

Matt: Yeah, absolutely. 

Lauren: Yeah, that's fine. I don't know anyone who's doing that. Definitely not me. If anyone wants to talk about 1989 Taylor’s Version, you can find me on Instagram.

Matt: Taylor Swift is a self-publisher, by the way. Or a self-published creator, I should say. 

Lauren: She's a marketing genius.

Matt: But let's stick with your, your little run here. So, you know self-publishing really is one of the only options for publishing that gives you the opportunity to connect directly to your fan base or your followers. Again, this is partly why we see artists and creators like Taylor Swift and others moving towards this model of finding ways to take their content directly to their fans and followers and cutting out a lot of the third party systems that have historically had their hands in the pot, right? And they were controlling that connection between the creator and their fans, their followers, whether you're creating written content as a, as an author or whether you're creating music content as a, you know, a musician or otherwise. So, you know, self-publishing is really the only path that's going to allow you to start forging those direct paths to your followers and fans to turn them into super fans like Lauren, who will do just about anything for a new release from Taylor Swift. 

Lauren: Yes, that's true. But I think it's also – and then I promise I'll let the Taylor Swift part fade out of this conversation after this – 

Matt: No you won’t. 

Lauren: At least for this episode. 

Matt: Alright. 

Lauren: But you know, she is also a great example of the importance of owning your content. You know, I mean, if you're familiar at all with what she's doing right now with these album re-records, she lost the rights to her music and she's re-recording them so that she owns the rights to them. Traditional publishers own the rights to your book if you choose the traditional publishing route. And there is eventually a point where you get them back, that's part of what gets built into your contract. But how long it is before you get those rights varies by contract. And what the publisher can do with those rights in the meantime, until you get them back, is entirely up to them. So they can sell them to other publishing houses and other countries, they can decide what they're going to do with your book. Once it's past its prime and past its selling point, and now it's your backlist, they can decide to let it run out of print, they can decide to let it languish on shelves forever and do nothing with it. And you can't do anything with that point either, because they own the rights to it. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So if that's something that's important to you, if growing your brand and owning your content is important to you, self-publishing is absolutely the correct path for you, because you want to own the rights to your own content. 

Matt: That's right. 

Lauren: And beyond that, you want to…I don't wanna say own your fans because I hate that language. 

Matt: But you wanna own that experience. 

Lauren: You wanna own the fan experience, yeah. 

Matt: Yeah, absolutely. 

Lauren: And the community. 

[18:37]

Matt: Definitely, 100%. And again, that's not something you can necessarily facilitate in an easy manner, or at all, when you don't have control over the content or the distribution of that content and some of the other aspects that come along with that. So, you know, we also talk a lot about this concept of, you know, building on rented land and, more importantly, try not to do that. But when we say build on rented land, we talk about the idea that all of the social media channels that are out there right now and some of these other platforms that people are using to communicate and build audiences and communities of followers. You know, you don't own any of that. 

Once you post something on Instagram, you kind of lose ownership of that because tomorrow you could wake up and that that platform could be gone or, or, you know, you could wake up and Zuckerberg decided that Instagram is now going to become, you know, a platform that basically services only mathematicians. How about that? And all of a sudden your content is no good anymore. But you don't own that content anymore. You don't own that platform. And the…whatever amount of followers you've built up there, whether it's again, Instagram or any other channel, you don't even own the access to those followers. They can suspend your account anytime they want. And you just lost access. 

So finding ways to make that connection and to solidify that connection into a way where you have more control, and again, for lack of a better word, ownership over those fans, followers, and that experience that they're going to have with you as a creator, that's important and that's what self-publishing allows you to do versus traditional publishing and some of the other options that are out there. 

Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. And these examples might sound extreme, a little bit, but they're really not. I was formerly the Social Media Manager here at Lulu, so I have spent a lot of time digging into the intricacies of our various social channels. And Instagram a year or two ago, like bold-faced made the statement that they are no longer a photo sharing app. They are now a video-first app. Like that is Instagram itself…Instagram made the decision that they are a video-first platform. Photo sharing is secondary to them. 

Matt: Yeah

Lauren: So if you are a creator that has connected with your audience for years by posting photos on Instagram and then suddenly Instagram shifts and now they're no longer prioritizing photos and you're like, ‘oh god, but I hate creating video content’ or ‘I'm not good at creating video content.’ 

Matt: Well, and how many professional photographers out there woke up and they were just like, ‘oh man, are you kidding me?’ 

Lauren: Yeah, yeah, you know, so you want to make sure that you’re giving yourself as many options as possible, on experiences and platforms that you own to make sure that you can maintain that relationship with your fans, no matter what decisions outside sources make. 

[21:12]

Matt: Yeah. And the, the, the deeper dive there –and when we talk about owning, you know, the customers, fans, that experience, part of that relies on you having that data. And I guess that's kind of the elephant in the room that we're dancing around here, you can't have ownership of that data of the people who are purchasing your books, or doing other things with your content, if you're not self-publishing. The publishers own that data – and in fact half the time the publishers don't even have that data – it's the third-party sales retailers that actually have that data. When you take on the responsibility of owning your content and selling it directly to your fans in your community, through using self-publishing and direct sales tactics, you're the one collecting that data. You know exactly how many people have bought your book or books, you have their names, their email addresses, and any other piece of information that comes through on that transaction on your platform, and you can use that data to remarket. So every time you have a new book coming out, or an event that you're gonna be at, or any of these other things we're talking about when it comes to building a community and a brand and building up a dedicated audience of loyal fans, it starts with owning that data, and you can't do that if you're traditionally published. So once you have that data, you can begin those remarketing efforts. And that's really what's gonna help you continue to build and retain all of those readers. 

Lauren: Yeah, and turn them into super fans. That are gonna buy all your books forever. 

Matt: Stark raving mad super fans. 

Lauren: Hey, the ultimate goal in life is to find somebody who is going to buy your book without reading a single word of copy related to the book. 

Matt: Yeah. No, that's true. Yeah, 100%. 

Lauren: And I am absolutely one of those people, so.

Matt: I do it for certain authors and creators too. I mean, you know, I've fallen in love with Grady Hendrix. And so anything Grady Hendrix writes, pre-order, it doesn't matter. At any moment that I can get my hands on it, I'm gonna buy it. You know, I don't even care what the synoptis is or anything else. There's a few other authors like that. And then there's some where I kind of want to, you know, get some word of mouth from a friend or whatever. But yeah, I'm a fan like that of, let's say, Grady Hendrix. So yeah, I would buy it sight unseen. I wouldn't know anything about it. Tell me the title. Take my money. 

Lauren: Yep. I absolutely have some authors that I'm the same way about, bands that I'm the same way about. I like to collect vinyl, but I don't have, like, I don't need, like, an insane collection of them. And I'm also generally like a playlist-first person. So, but there are some bands and some artists that I don't care. I don't have to listen to the album, as soon as they have announced a new album, I'm like, well, ordering that vinyl now because I know I'm gonna want it and I know I'm gonna love it. And that's the goal for any creator. I would imagine. 

Matt: Well, yeah, you just brought up a good point. I also buy vinyl, but I've given myself a rule in an effort to not just spend all my money on vinyl, which is that I only buy the vinyl version of an album or something if it's a limited edition or if it's a re-release with some extra stuff in there. And that is really popular right now amongst a lot of the bands and people that I listen to. And so that's another option that you have when you're self-publishing that you don't when you're traditionally published. So you could release a book, and then, you know, at any point in time, even with that initial release, you could release, you know, a special edition and it might have a hardcover instead of a paperback or it might have a completely different cover that was drawn by some special artist. You can do lots of cool custom limited edition things and offer those up to your fans in your community, however you want, through using self-publishing and selling direct tactics. You cannot do that with any other path. So that's another great point. And I love that. And I think most fans love that. Getting something that feels like, ‘oh, this is for me because I'm a fan,’ like this is an exclusive thing and the average person out there won't have this and it makes me feel really good. 

Lauren: I absolutely agree. I'm also realizing right now how much time I spend nodding in response to things that people are saying, which is great for an audio-first medium, but you know, that's fine. Yeah, no, I completely agree, and as a collector of many things, including books, I absolutely own multiple copies of the same book because it's a collector's edition or an exclusive edition. Or, you know, we were in London for London Book Fair earlier this year. And a bunch of people when I came back were like, oh, what souvenirs did you get? And I said, books. And they said, no, no, but like, what souvenirs did you get? And I said…books. Because I went to Waterstones and bought, like, a bunch of UK editions of books I already owned. Yeah. I only bought one book that I didn't already own, but I brought, I flew home a bunch of books that I already owned because I wanted that, that special edition of it. 

Matt: You didn't expense that extra luggage fee, did you? 

Lauren: No, I had them as my carry-on, thank you very much. 

Matt: Okay. I'm making a note here to check your expense reports better next time, just in case.

Lauren: Don't worry. I didn't even have to pay for my checked bag. Because I fly often enough with Lulu that I am now Silver Medallion status on Delta. 

Matt: I don't know if that's good or bad, but…well that, that actually segues us into the next goal. 

Lauren: That is, you know what, that is a great segue.

[26:03]

Matt: And in fact, you know, in some of these surveys that we've done and some of the surveys that we participated in outside of Lulu within the creator economy and some other areas, the number one thing that keeps popping up, the number one reason why people were choosing to not only publish a book or use a book, but why they often chose self-publishing as that path, was to make more money. The simple matter is if you take a piece of paper and a pen and you start writing down the math of how this stuff works, again, depending on the size of your audience and how much effort you're willing to put into marketing, you're going to make more money with self-publishing. It's just, it's a mathematical fact, so. 

Lauren: It is, and then you can use that money to go fly all over the place and buy multiple copies of books. 

Matt: You can, or whatever else you want to buy.

Lauren: Or perhaps to grow your business. I don't know. 

Matt: That's a thought. Yeah. 

Lauren: But yeah, you know, and that might sound like a bold claim, especially if you're, like, somewhat familiar with traditional publishing versus self-publishing. And you're thinking right now like, yeah, but traditional publishing, you know, you sign a contract and you get an advance and you get like a nice chunk of money ahead of time. And then, you know, self-publishing, you're actually kind of putting money in before you get to see any return on that. And you're not wrong about that. That's fair. 

But the difference is the longevity of that and the sustainability of that. Traditional publishing, you know, the contract will include an upfront amount of money, and it will usually include then, like, a deal for a cut of any additional revenue that the book may make after it's paid out its print run, which is where that upfront amount of money is coming from. That is an advance on what they think your book is gonna sell and how much money you think your book is gonna make. Of course, the publishing company also gets a cut of those profits. So it's not like you're getting 100% of the revenue on that. 

Also, it happens a lot where books don't sell through their initial print run. Which you don't usually, you don't have to then turn around and pay the publisher back. Like, that's not a situation. But it very often happens where people don't wind up getting any additional revenue after that up front with a traditional publisher because they didn't sell through their print run. So sure, that sounds like an attractive option for getting a nice check right now, but what's the sustainability of that? You're not making any kind of steady stream of passive income or anything like that out of that circumstance, which you are going to be able to do if you self-publish and if you self-publish correctly, which we're here to help you do. 

Matt: Yeah, absolutely. You referenced the book advance that you might get if you are signed to a traditional publisher. We talked a little bit about how, yes, of course, there are some things you have to pay for upfront when self-publishing, mainly if you were going to, obviously, contract an editor and some of those other services, which you should do, by the way. 

Lauren: Please do. 

Matt: And yes, there's no initial advance or payout upfront for self-publishing. But again, back to what we started this segment off with, there's a much more direct and straightforward division of the revenues that you will be making when you publish yourself. Exact percentages of breakdown of how much the author publisher and retailer make typically vary by the distribution platform. But it almost always results in a higher cut of the profits going to the author. There's plenty of data and statistics to support this. Most, you know, reputable self-publishing companies will have calculators or things on their sites where you can calculate exactly how much you should make from each book, you know, depending on what retail price you want to set and how much the manufacturing cost will end up being. There's definitely no doubt that all of the tools exist, all the resources exist for you to sit down and pen-to-paper, figure out exactly how much you're going to make based on whatever projections you can come up with. And again, back to what Lauren was saying, traditional publishing does not equal book sales. Hard stop. 

Lauren: It doesn't. 

Matt: It does not equal book sales, period. And let's just say they take a gamble on your manuscript because they think they can sell it or they project they can sell it. If it undersells – and depending on how badly it does undersell if it does – you run the risk of them never wanting to, to take another manuscript from you again. Which you know, not always the end of the world, but there are ramifications if you don't earn out of your advance. You know above and beyond just the money aspect of it and and that's just one more thing to have to worry about, versus, you know if you are in control of the distribution channels for your content, and if you're the one that's watching those numbers and those unit sales and you don't have that extra added pressure of somebody else. It's a much easier feeling going through that journey. 

Lauren: Yeah, that's also a really great point too, is having that control over those sales and distribution channels. Because if you are traditionally publishing, it's kind of this double-edged sword where your success as an author is dependent on your book sales, but you don't have any control over those book sales. The only way that you have control over that is whatever marketing efforts you make as an author directly. Which yes, absolutely, if you are traditionally published, you're not just sitting on a beach with a cocktail while other people market your book. You have to do a lot of your own marketing, a lot of your own marketing. And that's always a big surprise for people when they are new to the traditional publishing model. 

You don't get to control where your book is being sold, what bookstores carry your book, the accessibility of your book. The publisher controls all of that, even the list price or, you know, who it's marketed to, whether it's marketed to a specific audience or not. That is all decided by your publisher and not by you. So, you know, there's a lot of hanging on whether or not your book sells and then you have very little control over the details that will determine whether or not your book sells. So if that's something that you are interested in, if that's something that you would prefer to have control over those details, self-publishing is probably the correct path for you. And even further beyond that, selling direct is probably the best path for you. 

Matt: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I don't know, you're selling me. 

Lauren: That's really my goal here. 

Matt: Well, you're doing a good job of it. 

Lauren: Thanks. I appreciate it. 

Matt: Yeah, I was looking at some, some data as we were talking too – and I get this from wordsrated.com, it's a place where they aggregate a lot of book sales, statistics and metrics, and they pay very close attention to a lot of the the the publishers when they do publish their their sales data. But there's a metric there that just caught my eye for a second as we were talking. It's a pretty big number, but I'm sure there's a, there's a variation there, plus or minus. But it's estimated that around 300 million self-published books are sold every year. That's a big number. And it's not a number that I paid attention to in recent time. But again, in looking through this article at wordsrated.com, that's a big number. And that's another motivator for me, that that many self-published books are being purchased every year, give or take. Let's just say it's off by 50 million. You're still talking anywhere from 200 to 250 million self-published books being purchased annually. Like, that's a lot of books being purchased. 

[33:05]

Lauren: That's a huge number. And it's also – we didn't really plan on talking about this at all, and I'm realizing that might be a little bit of an oversight. I know a lot of people have hesitated in the past because of the stigma about self-publishing and saying, like, you know, ‘isn't self-publishing kind of the lesser version?’ And that stigma is going away at a rapid pace at this point. I mean, literally in the time that I've worked at Lulu, I've watched that change significantly in just like the four and a half years that I've been here. And you know, there are a lot of books these days that are self-published. There are books, if you're interested in, like, BookTok or Bookstagram or something like that, like some of the biggest name fiction books out there right now are self-published. There have been multiple stories in the last couple of years of self-published books popping off so hard that they've hit the New York Times bestseller list, which is very rare, and have wound up getting picked up by traditional publishers. And then there have been stories of creators and authors that have had that happen to them and have had their books do so well that a traditional publisher has reached out to them and said, ‘we'd love to publish this for you.’ And they say, ‘no, I'm having more success as a self-published author. Thank you very much. I'm going to keep doing it this way,’ which is incredible. 

Matt: Yeah, definitely. 

Lauren: So, okay, obviously. I think we're on the same page with this. If you want to make money selling your books, self-publishing is a great option for you. Absolutely. And the great way to do it. So what else? 

[34:26]

Matt: So I think that, you know, when we talk about why people even create a book, we've talked in the past about how a book is good, or as a good tool potentially to, to help you grow a business or a brand, something like that. Obviously a lot of people are motivated to write simply because they have a story they want to share or you know, some knowledge or experience that they'd like to share. And so they want to write something that's a little more along the lines of a, you know, a reference book or something like that. But in general, I think people write because they feel like they have something to say. And so again, if your goal is to really sort of get out on paper, you know, into the form of a book, a story or stories or some life experiences or, again, some knowledge or experience and if you're leaning towards that nonfiction side of the world. In many cases based on barriers to entry I think self-publishing is going to be the easiest and best path for you with a goal like that. Again, we talk about motivations for writing, I think that if your motivation is anything other than, as you said earlier – which you would jump at the chance – to get some clout as a writer, as a famous author, or something like that. If you have any other aspirations outside of that, self-publishing is your path. 

Lauren: We've talked about this already a little bit earlier in the episode about the barriers to entry, and we didn't even scratch the surface. There are all kinds of barriers to entry in traditional publishing when it comes to race, nationality, religion, sexuality, gender identity, and just people not having the opportunity to share whatever that story is.

Matt: Oftentimes these aren't seen, and in many cases they are, you know, deeply ingrained into the process and workflows within the world of publishing. And it's certainly getting better, but it still is not where it should be and where it could be, to be honest with you. But nonetheless, you know, these barriers to entry exist. And so when you talk about self-publishing, I mean, that is the very nature of, of not having a barrier to entry and anybody can truly publish their story, their experiences or something along those lines. And I think that's one of the greatest things about self-publishing is it does allow all of those marginalized communities and those other entities that have experienced this type of barrier to entry to get their stories out in a way that is meaningful and has impact. So I think that's important to note and I think that's again a really great benefit of self-publishing. 

Lauren: Absolutely, it is. 

[36:56]

Matt: Yeah. I think the last one that I think is probably important to cover here, or one of the reasons we see people choosing self-publishing as a path, especially as a content creator or content entrepreneur. And we do talk about this one a lot, but it's really important. And it's one of the examples we're seeing a lot more real world usage. And that is, you know, if you're looking to establish yourself as an authority in your industry or field, or an expert in your industry, and you know, you want to become a thought leader, or seen as a thought leader. Maybe you're in early stages of a particular startup or a business. Again, we've talked about using a book for that purpose, and clearly self-publishing is the path to that. Those types of activities, they're ripe for self-publishing. 

Speed to market is really important in those situations. So again, if you're looking to use a book, to self-publish a book as a way to further your brand or your business, or start networking with peers and having a reason to get into certain circles, or things like that, that speed to market is super important. You're not going to have that with a traditional publisher, and sometimes even with a hybrid publisher. So when you're in a situation where you need your content to get to market quickly, it needs to be published quickly. And maybe that's because the landscape is changing quickly as well. So when you talk about something like AI, AI changes every single day. People's stance on AI changes every single day. What the definition of an AI expert is changes every single day. And so if you are hoping to put out a book of any size around the concept or the concepts and or the constructs of AI, you need to get that to market pretty quickly and then once you do, you need to have the ability to update and revise that content quickly and there's no other channel that's going to allow you to do that other than self publishing. 

Lauren: Yeah. I think that revision aspect of it is really important to remember too. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: That the time to market for traditional publishing does include any kind of revisions you want to make to your books. So, you know, if you wrote a book about social media, for example, social media marketing in the 2020s, and, you know, one day some billionaire decides to wake up and change the name of a major platform, and you want to update your manuscript to reflect that change... 

Matt: Good luck.

Lauren: Yeah, you know, a year from now, your book might maybe… 

Matt: Yeah. So if you were one of those who wanted to write a book, let's say about NFTs, for example, and you submitted that to your publisher last year and in the heyday of NFTs, or even earlier this year, and it's still not hit the market yet, you might as well go ahead and pull that manuscript back and just cancel that project. Another example of where speed to market is absolutely critical. So traditional publishing is not going to give you that. There's just no way. So if you're in a situation where, where time is not your friend, and you need to leverage speed, self-publishing is your ticket to ride for sure. I think that when you talk about things like speed to market, it's important to again, go back and reiterate that speed to market should not always be synonymous with bad content. 

Lauren: Oh, absolutely.

Matt: I guess to put it diplomatically, like again, just to make it clear, Lauren and I are staunch proponents of working with editors and designers and especially developmental editors when and where you can. I understand that sometimes it could be cost prohibitive, and you might need to cut a few corners. But, you know, speed to market is great. But please don't make that synonymous with bad quality content. 

Lauren: Just because you can publish a book overnight doesn't mean you should. 

Matt: That's right. 

Lauren: But you can publish a book in less than one to two years. 

Matt: That's right. Absolutely. You can publish a book in days if you want to. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: I mean, we're just saying, you know, for purposes of making money from that book, of making impact, of using that book to establish yourself, all these things we're talking about, you really need to put some time and effort into it. So speed of market is important, but again, within the context of putting out a good piece of quality content, for sure. 

Lauren: Kind of related to that, speed to market, and also to that idea of making updates and revisions to your existing manuscript. We've talked – actually in our first episode – we talked a lot about this idea of establishing yourself as an authority or expert by using a book. And if one of your methods for establishing yourself as that expert is doing online courses or workshops or regular speaking engagements or something like that, you might be using a book as a workbook or as supplemental material as part of those educational resources or those educational experiences. And if you're doing that, you're going to want to be able to make updates and changes to your book. You're not going to want to print a book that you can use for your online course that two months in you realize, oh, I'd like to tweak this thing about it, and you can't make those changes, because you already have that printed copy of that book. That's where self-publishing is super great, because you can immediately just go online, make those quick updates to your, to your existing book file, and the next copy of your book that is printed is going to have those updates in it. 

Matt: That's right. I'd say those are some very good reasons that self-publishing is the best path.

Lauren: I like to think so. 

[41:58]
Matt: For creators, and authors, and artists, and, and people who enjoy making money and want to make more of it, for those people who want to establish themselves as authorities or experts. For some of those people that are really writing because they just have a story to share and they really want to get it out there, and they're not going to be able to do that through a traditional publisher. I think these are all great reasons. And most importantly all of these reasons used in combination will help you build a larger community of fans and followers around your content and your work, which ultimately is the long-term goal. You want to, to build something that you can sustain long-term, and not spend 40 years of your life in a cubicle working for somebody else. Right. 

Lauren: That sounds like the dream. She says to her boss. 

Matt: That's okay. I know where you're coming from. I don't take it personally. So, uh, anything else you might want to add to these, these four things that we've talked about that we've discussed that I, uh, I would consider to be the most high level reasons why self-publishing is probably the best path for creators, especially today? We didn't go super deep into a lot of the technology that powers all of this stuff, but suffice to say that if you start digging into what we've been talking about, you will find that not only Lulu, but there are other platforms that help facilitate this as well, like Shopify and WooCommerce and some other ecommerce platforms, and lots of great tools out there to start you on your journey to self-publishing and selling that content direct and building your own community. 

Lauren: And I'm sure we will at some point. And if we don't, I know for a fact that we have on various other Lulu content channels. So if you, if you want that information, it's out there, you can go find it. 

Matt: That's true. 

Lauren: That's for sure. But no, I think we've done a pretty thorough job. I mean, I'm convinced personally. 

Matt: Well, that was the goal is to win you back from the dark side of wanting to be traditionally published to get some clout for whatever fanfiction you'll be writing about Taylor Swift at the Haunted Mansion next week. 

Lauren: You're not allowed to self-publish fanfiction. We know that. 

Matt: There's that barrier to entry. Alright, thanks everybody for joining us today. It's been fun talking about paths to publishing for creators and we hope you'll join us next week for another episode. 

Lauren: Thanks for listening.