Guest blog: Self publishing

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Hannah

Recent developments in the publishing industry have opened up a whole new range of opportunities for writers, writes Hannah Vaughan.

Self-publishing has now gained itself the credibility it deserves with most titles reaching the best-seller lists and with authors maintaining full royalties of their work.

However, this has come with a stampede of self-published titles vying for space amidst the crowd. So what sets a great book apart? – Quality.

To decide to self-publish you need to cement one thing first before you go any further. You have to now see your book and yourself as a business. Everything from the production, the distribution channels, the marketing, now falls under your creative eye. This may sound daunting but if you surround yourself with useful industry guidance, you end up running your own bookable business with complete freedom.

That’s the great thing about self-publishing – you have complete control over your work. Of course, if you sign to a traditional publishing house, they take some of the worries of marketing off your shoulders, but you can lose other crucial aspects.

If you self-publish, you decide when and where you sell your book, maintain your chosen title, keep all your royalties and, potentially, earn a whole lot more.

Submitting to a huge faceless company online can mean you are left out of the process and are uncertain of the end result. Your project should be a collaboration to publish the best book possible centred on your creativity. People want two things: value for their money and a great story.

The explosion of the e-book marketplace was an exciting moment in publishing but statistics now show that this initial boom is plateauing and the physical book has kept its strong presence in the market. This proves the quality of the book is more vital than ever.

Essentially, the thing that sets you apart is the quality of your book. An open and human discussion needs to be had about creating a legitimate writing career – and this starts at the product itself. Foreground yourself with credibility to your reader and produce a beautifully bound book with no spelling mistakes and reel in those good reviews.

Books also offer a way to be versatile. Whether it’s your writing group’s anthology to give to loved ones, a novel you envisage selling in chain bookshops, or a business book used for a marketing campaign, books are a universal sign of validity.

We all have a favourite book that we go back to time and time again; the trick is building that same loyalty from an audience by establishing your writing professionally.

About the Author:

Hannah Vaughan is the marketing and editorial assistant for TJ INK, part of TJ International, offering book publishing services to writers, authors and professionals. A BA Hons degree in English with Creative Writing, Hannah is passionate about reading, publishing and local writing talent.