Estimated reading time: 3 – 5 minutes

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

There’s an unfortunate stigma attached to self-publishing. That said, it is an effective approach for many writers that allows them to maximize their profits by cutting out the middlemen ? agents and publishers – provided they have the requisite skills: writing, editing, layout, formatting, cover design, book production, contract negotiation, marketing, advertising, publicity, public speaking, organization skills…

What? You thought you could just write the book and pay someone to print it and – tada! – it would end up on the shelves at Barnes & Noble? I know that’s my secret wish…

The stigma of self-publishing is this: Too many self-published books are badly written, unedited, amateurishly formatted, hastily produced tree massacres that reek of desperation.

Nevertheless, I opted to self-publish my first novel ? Lost Souls, Restless Spirits – an odd thing that defies categorization and synopsis, written in thirty days during one of the worst years of my life – well, you can see why there’s a stigma attached to self-publishing. And with a sales pitch like that, you can see why I need a real publisher with a large staff of publicists who can help me market the book.

To be honest, my first foray into self-publishing came because I saw an ad for Lulu.com and I was curious. I knew that my novel, written during my first attempt at NaNoWriMo ? National Novel Writing Month – probably did not have mass-market appeal, so I was willing to risk stigmatizing it in the discovery of new things. I gave up attempting to write a synopsis. I do have the skills needed to get a book ready for production. I also know the value of a good editor – I did not throw my book up on on Lulu without running it by a few of those folks and saying, “Does this make me look like a big fat ass?”

Even an experiment should reflect reasonably well on your abilities as an author. This is the same principle that drives us to wear something other than our pajamas to the grocery store. People we care about might actually see the darned thing. Who knows? It might sell. It might even be a hit…

Well, not with a marketing plan like I had (what marketing plan?) but it could happen. Self-publishing is a good choice for authors with tight niche markets and a product those markets need. Non-fiction tends to do quite well.

Early reviews were good. Early reviews? People actually bought this thing? I sought to return the favor, buying reviewers’ books and eagerly anticipating the nice things I would say about them. One simply paraphrased several common “urban legends,” and went from “large print” to “ginormous print” (about 10 words per page) halfway through the book! I rethought the plan: I now consider the cover price paid “hush money.” I didn’t post a review.

Should I have? Reviews are about the only “editorial oversight” possible with self-publishing. Most of us were raised to say nothing if we couldn’t think of something “nice” to say. But is our reluctance to give honest peer reviews really what’s “stigmatizing” self-publishing? It’s easy to blame poor writing, lack of editing, and a dearth of skills needed to bring a book to market and sell it – but would you keep making the same mistakes over and over again if someone took you aside early on and said, “No, that’s not how you do it. Look here…”?

Do you fantasize about writing a book? Come on over to Writing to Exhale and read my guest post: “So, You Want to Write a Book?” The first step towards making the dream a reality is all a matter of writing it. Then the real work begins. Are you up for it? Then let’s go!