The Self Publishing Magazine

Welcome to The Self Publishing Magazine! This new magazine is for all those who are thinking about, who currently are or who have in the past written, published and sold their own book.

With expert advice on book production, marketing, design and publicity to help you get the most from your self publishing projects, the magazine also includes articles by authors who have already been there... so that you can learn some of the dos and don’ts, and avoid some of the pitfalls. So whether you choose to go it alone or sign up with a self publishing company, there will be features of relevance to you.

Self publishing has come a long way in the last five years or so. Once seen suspiciously as another form of vanity publishing, it is now increasingly viewed as a respectable way for authors to get a foot on the publishing ladder. The commonly-held belief that authors only publish their books for personal vanity is now way off the mark. The motivations for self publishing are numerous: a desire to be more widely read; a hope that the book will be picked up by a ‘traditional’ publisher; the wish to publish for a small audience, one that a commercial publisher will not find profitable; the personal fulfilment of one’s hobby; publishing for family and friends; publishing as part of a business venture; or a wish to make money from writing. These, and many others, are all perfectly valid reasons for an author to consider financing the publication of their own book.

There are other pressures that lead authors to consider self publishing. As the large publishers get larger their output becomes less eclectic – the marketers take over, and unless your book fits into what’s ‘hot’, the chances of landing a publishing deal are slim. Developments in printing technology have also reduced the cost of publishing a book to a level that can be reached by most, and there are now numerous respectable companies that produce quality books at prices that make this commercially feasible for authors.

The production values of most self published books are now often comparable to those of ‘commercial’ books. Indeed, most bookshops are selling self published books without even realising it!

But what about the quality of a book’s content? Cynics will assume that all self published books are dreadful... surely, if they were any good they would have snapped up by a commercial publisher? But as we’ve seen, there are many other author-financed books out there published for reasons other than vanity. And many companies offering self publishing services are actually turning down books on the basis of poor quality of content. There’s a lot more realism among authors as to what will sell, and a lot of good books are being self published as a result.

The Self Publishing Magazine also incorporates our sister publication Readers’ Review, which reviews a wide selection of recent and forthcoming self published books in each issue with the aim of highlighting the quality books in all genres. All reviews are arranged by Readers’ Review independently of the author to ensure a fair review, and we’ll be publishing reviews both good and bad.

So if you are considering taking the step of publishing your own book, The Self Publishing Magazine will give you invaluable help.