Self Publishing Tips: An Interview with Chris Andrews
By Curieux
Q: What is the biggest difference between traditional publishing routes and self-publishing?
Chris: In my opinion, there’s a real misconception that traditional publishing is a lot easier in the sense that you get an agent, or a publisher, and they do all the work for you. It’s actually not that simple. They will still expect you to do all your own marketing and everything else- they’ll take the risk for doing a cover, and do the layout, editing, etc, but not much else. You have to sell your books anyway, and if you don’t sell thousands of books, they are within their rights to drop you. I have friends who have scored publishing deals with major publishers, and they sold well on the first book, sold okay on the second book, but projections suggested that they were not going to make enough money on the third book, so they got dropped without even having the whole series published.
Q: So, what’s the alternative?
Chris: The alternative is you can learn how to do everything yourself or create a network of freelancers, which you can do easily through sites like Fiverr or Upwork, to do your covers, editing, project management, etc. The thing is when you do it yourself, you have full control, and you have potential for a lot more money. Say you self-publish an Ebook with Amazon. Amazon gives you 70% back, whereas a publisher will pay 25%, and if you go directly to a bookshop, they will take about