Deciding how to share your story with the world is something very easy for some and difficult for others. The reasons may differ case-by-case. After seeing – and reading – many self-published books, I needed little time to realize it’s the way I want to take. In this post, I’ll share the reasons.

Most of my reasons are coming from the fact I took up writing as a hobby and keeping the story in my hands takes priority over almost anything.

Creative control

The biggest reason is staying in full creative control. If I went the traditional way, the publisher or editor could force an edit I might disagree with so the final product is more in line with the stories they want to sell – or with what they know will sell.

I, being a hobby-writer, don’t have my priority on selling as many copies as I can, even though it’d be nice. I started writing to tell the story I want to tell. Self-publishing means that I make the final decision on where my story goes. That does not mean I won’t listen to feedback. What this means is that I can choose how to handle it. And that no matter how the story fares “out in the world”, I’ll release it knowing it’s exactly the story I wanted to tell.

And, it also means I can choose the cover design – which I admit is a double-edged blade, and a topic I might cover when I get to that point.

Community

I haven’t finished the first book yet and I’ve already found several people willing to share advice and insight. While the amount of people I communicate with is still very low, those connections were forged through the willingness to help and shared interests. And, as many of those people are readers as well, I can get insight from both sides.

Online presence

Self-publishing means I choose how I communicate with the world, not the publisher or agent or whoever. If I decide that my communication with the world will be through my weblog and Goodreads and that I don’t want to have anything to do with Facebook, I can do that. There’s nothing to force me into doing something I don’t want.

No external deadlines

I started writing in summer 2015. I am still working on it. There’s no deadline to meet, I can give it all the time in the world until it’s ready. And when it is, I’ll release knowing I gave it all. In the meantime, I have some work done on the sequels so my potential readers will not be waiting too long for them but the main advantage stays: I decide when to release the book(s) and I can decide to pull back #1 to shorten the gaps between sequels if I believe it to be a good move. And I’ll not face days of stress due to a deadline and/or risk rushing the final version.

Setting the price

I’ve kept neutral through most of this post but this is the only point where I can’t. What I hate about traditional publishing is the artificial inflating of e-book prices. Specifically, pricing the e-book almost the same as paperback book despite having minimal production costs (no printing, transportation, large-scale storage, etc.). The two most crucial elements of any book – the author and the readers – are all being ripped off by that practice. Readers by having to pay much more for no reason and authors by getting (almost) nothing from the difference.

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Those are the main reasons. For me, the priorities I have means the mentioned reasons outweigh the disadvantages. Again, it’s something that varies for everyone and everyone making this decision should carefully consider the pros and cons of both ways – and how they align with their goals and priorities. I open to discussion and will welcome your comments, questions, and opinions on this matter.