Who To Self-Publish With

So you have you thought more about writing your own book?

As you know, I decided to self-publish. It took me months and months to get to that point and hours, and days, and WEEKS of research. Let me do some of the leg work for you and give you some of my thoughts about who to self-publish with.

I spent countless hours researching publishing companies and so many of the ones I would want to be associated with, were not accepting “new authors.” And if any would’ve been a possibility, I’d have to hire a literary agent and the process of doing that, I just didn’t want to spend the money. I realized trying to publish a book was becoming more than what I wanted it to be. For me at that time, I just wanted to write a book. I wanted to put my heart into it and trying to jump through all of these hoops to do so, just didn’t feel right to me. So…

I started to research the idea of self-publishing.

Though I quickly found out, there are SO MANY OPTIONS OUT THERE! Every company has their specialty. The top 2 companies I was looking at were:

• Lulu
• DiggyPod

These, from the research I did, are excellent companies to work with, but I was still unsettled about the whole thing. You know that feeling? When it just doesn’t seem right, but you can’t pinpoint what it is? Well, I now call that “a nudge” from God saying, “Hold on just a second…”

It wasn’t until a youth ministry friend and mentor encouraged me to check out a self-publishing company that an author he knew, used. After looking into it for just a short amount of time, I realized I finally found my answer!

It is called CreateSpace, which is owned by Amazon. (Who knew Amazon also has a publishing company, right?)

At the time, they were offering cover designing, formatting, and editing options, which at the time, sounded really good to me. But they were all “add-ons,” which I liked because then if I wanted to do something on my own, I could, without having to pay for a “packaged” deal, that with others, included things I didn’t need. After looking through some of the books online that were published through CreateSpace, I realized their books didn’t “look” self-published. You know the look!

Plus, to print each book was very reasonably priced – cheaper than most companies, but I felt their quality was excellent. So, I took the plunge.

Meanwhile, as I started to put the book together, CreateSpace announced they were doing away with all of their services, like formatting, editing, cover design, etc. I wasn’t committed in any way, but I was stuck. Was I really up to doing ALL of that on my own? It was a lot.

But I shouldn’t be surprised. God answered every single one of my worries with astonishing answers that far out-did anything I could have thunk (like that word?) up myself. He provided an editor. He led me to the BEST cover designer. And I taught myself the skill of book formatting.

So why do I like CreateSpace?

• Price – not that I was trying to do this cheap, but CreateSpace was well worth the price
• Quality – I was very pleased with the quality of the pages and covers
• Proof options are so helpful – you can make as many changes as you want and order as many proofs as you want! You can even view/download it digitally, free of charge.
• Turn-Around – They printed and shipped out my order of 300 books in slightly over a week’s time, which was impressive to me!
• They made publishing and distribution to Amazon and other retailers very easy – simple click of a button!
• 100% satisfaction guaranteed – damaged books are replaced free of charge
• Customer Support is (surprisingly) helpful and quick to respond, if needed
• Community forums, though quite dated, are helpful as well.

Things I don’t like about it?

• The website it a bit hard to follow at times, but I’ve got it down now!
• The internal reviewer (preview of what book will look like), is a bit confusing and actually wasn’t 100% accurate, but that is why ordering a physical proof is vital!
• They do not offer a hardback option

I know every company has their niche, and so I’m sure there are many companies out there who would be wonderful to self-publish with. For me, hands down, I would choose CreateSpace again for publishing a paperback book!

I would love to hear if anyone else who reads this blog, has self-published before? Who did you use? Thoughts?