Self-Publish??

Last night at dinner, G brought up the possibility of self-publishing. I mentioned to him that the current story I am working on was originally intended for submission to Harlequin’s ebook program called Spice Briefs. However, I read online that the huge romance publisher only pays out 6 or 7 percent of the sales in royalties to its authors. Considering that the briefs sell for around 3 or 4 bucks, it would take a lot of sales to make any good money. I decided to check out Ellora’s Cave because some authors mentioned that their royalties are paid out at 37.5%. On one hand, I doubt they get as many daily hits as Harlequin, but then again, it wouldn’t take as much to make the same amount of money.

This is when G said, why don’t I just put up my own website and sell my own books, thereby getting 100% of the profits? It’s definitely not a bad idea, but I have to wonder… if it’s such a great idea, why isn’t everyone doing it? The daunting task of building up enough traffic on your website to bring in sales is enough to put most people off, I imagine. Then, figuring out how to get your story into Adobe format and have it encrypted to only allow downloads after someone has paid for it. Not to mention things like… having to do your own cover art and editing and such. I imagine it could mean a ton of work. On the other hand, if you are willing to work hard, the payout could be incredible.

This is definitely an issue I will be putting some thought into over the next few weeks. I’ll probably hop around on the internet a bit this weekend and see what kind of information I can find on people who have tried this and how they are doing or what they are doing right/wrong. Overall, it’s a pretty exciting idea to have complete control over your own work.