Publishing

Why self-publish?

Publishers are innundated with manuscripts, in a country where, in a regular book store, a bestseller is either a fiction book that sells more than 3000 copies or a non-fiction book that sells more than 10 000. They have to find the ones that will be bestsellers, otherwise they are out of business. They will be much more interested in your book if you arrive with a market - but then, you have to ask yourself, why go through a traditional publisher when you can self-publish and get all the profits for yourself? In a traditional publishing contract, authors receive only 5% - 15% of the profit of the books sold. The reason for this is because the publisher pays a large amount of money to put your book together, distribute and market it. And they still have to get that outlay of cash back before they make a profit. The last person to see money is the author. Your emotions and hard work simply don't count. If you can't make the publishers money, for whatever reason, they are not going to publish your book.

Perhaps though, for you, things are a little different. You might have a market. That is:

* You teach and students will buy your textbook.
* 200 of your closest friends have pledged to buy the book should it ever be published.
* You don't care about the money, you just want to see your name in print.
* You're going to give the book away to family members.
* Your book contains information currently in no other book and people in your field of expertise would buy it.
* You'll sell the book yourself.
* Most importantly, you are prepared to foot the publishing bill in exchange for: A real, beautiful, quality book with an ISBN number and your name on it.

If any of these apply to you, then you have a reason to self-publish.

You'll be happy to know that there are a number of friendly South African self-publishers who can quickly publish your book for you. They can put your book together in a stock template with a basic cover and organise any needed editing. All self-publishers strive to help their authors with some sort of marketing and distribution. Obviously, what they do varies from company to company. You can do the exact same process yourself, online. You can do this with us too, at around the same rate as the other publishers.

But... none of the little details, those critical details in font, layout, and format, accuracy, thoroughness and design that differentiate a well published book from a self-published one, will be there. Furthermore, you will have to put it under your own ‘publishing house’ as the ada enup logo only graces books that have gone through our rigorous, passionate process.

Interested in checking out the publishing options? Click here for the next step.