Self-Publishing Competition

In my last blog, I compared self-publishing to opening a book store when there are already three on the block. On average, around 2,700 new titles are self-published every day. That's a lot of competition! Your book will have to take its place, not only in books published that day, but in books published before yours – millions of books. Writing competition is so overwhelming that you'd better provide something different or unique.

So, how do you compete? To that, I will ask another question. Do you really want to compete? This goes back to your goals. If this book is for friends and family, then your answer is probably no. If you want to be a long-term best-seller, then the answer is yes. There is a lot of distance between these two goals and the majority of writers are going to fall in that area.

Did you know there are many good writers who never publish a book? Publishing is a lot of work and marketing can be a real headache. The fact that someone has never been published doesn't reflect badly on their writing skill. Nor does publishing assure they are a good writer.

When I began writing, there were only two viable ways to publish; traditionally or vanity press. It was called vanity press because it was assumed that self-published writers simply wanted to see their name in print and they were willing to pay for that privilege. Self-publishing was looked down on then for the same reason it is now. Anyone can publish anything, only now they can do it for free.

Many famous writers got started by self-publishing. Steven King is one. It wasn't his writing skills that caused rejection of his manuscripts. It was the content. Publishers didn't want to take the risk with something they thought their readers might not like. Self-publishing isn't the problem any more than censoring is the solution. By self-publishing, King opened a whole new genre, as have other self-published authors.

Apply this analogy to the idea of three bookstores on the block. Competition is not a bad thing. It forces us to produce better quality and be creative. With all those books being published daily, it is important that each book delivers quality time for the customer.

 Write what you want to write, but write it right. If your book is full of spelling and grammatical errors, you can't expect it to compete positively with a well-written book that has been edited. You can't expect a non-human program to be as effective as having multiple people edit your book.