Weekly Writers: Self Publishing (Part 2)

Support, and a revelation

Here’s the Weekly Writers Monday post. This post is for paid subscribers only. It’s the second part under the heading of self publishing: you’ll find part one here.

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Self Publishing (Part 2)

There are companies set up to help with the processes involved in independent publishing: for a fee. Some people see this as a separate category of publishing, called assisted or supported publishing. Personally, I just see that as a standard part of being an independent author. The author can hire people to take care of different aspects of the publishing process, or they can use a single company. It’s the same thing, because the point is that the author pays upfront. That’s what defines an independent author, as opposed to trade/traditionally published (where the author pays for the services though a significant cut in their royalties instead).

Do be aware that some supported publishing companies are reputable and useful; others can be predatory and little more than vanity publishers who make their money from authors (rather than by selling books to readers), whilst using deceptive practices and charging huge fees. ALLi (the Alliance of Independent Authors) have an excellent rating system for publishing service companies which will warn you about some of the bad ones. Their Watchdog desk also monitors predatory vanity presses such as all the Author Solutions imprints.

Speaking of ALLi, they have an additional professional category of authorpreneur for independent authors who have sold more than 50,000 books. An example would be LJ Ross, who appeared on the cover of The Bookseller (30^th June 2023) to celebrate the fact that she had sold eight million books, all through her own imprint. In fact, her DCI Ryan series is apparently the UK’s second best-selling book series of all time (outranking Harry Potter) according to The Big Indie Author Data Drop 2023.