Hello Reader,
I'm sitting on another long flight heading back to Texas from dubai. Thanks and gratitude for all of my students this week who asked great questions and opened new research points I need to flush out in future testing.
I thought since I don't know if this flight will have wifi I would write down why I'm going to self publish this time rather than go through a publisher.
1. Most publishers today are understaffed. This means that turn around times are long, it's common for your editor to change multiple times and the magical editing process you think will transform your book into an impressive tome is really just a spelling and grammar check.
2. Publishers only push out updates every two years as new editions, and even with electronic books have no incentive to fix errors except on the author own errata site.
3. Before Amazon dominated bookstores publishers used to pay for marketing expenses by buying reserved shelf space. Now you are lucky if they pay for an Amazon ad. You are left to market the book yourself for a 12-16% royalty.
4. I've already published with McGraw Hill which means I've picked off ''real book" for most non technical people, you don't get bonus points for having any more published the same way unless you are going for tenure.
5. Strange requests for formatting and image quality controls. Their Major concerns are the cost of the printed book which leads to reduced image quality and forced conventions.
So I'm excited to control the process and thanks to all of you who have already shown Interest through leanpubs holding page!
Also Read: Daily Blog #531
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