Publish & Prosper
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Publish & Prosper
Debunking Myths and Misconceptions About Self-Publishing
In this episode, Matt & Lauren tackle some of the most common misconceptions about self-publishing. We debunk myths like:
❌ You won’t make any money self-publishing
❌ You have to spend a lot of money to self-publish
❌ There’s no credibility in self-publishing
And most importantly: fake M&Ms are just as good as real M&Ms.
Dive Deeper
💡 Editorial Freelancers Association Editorial Rates Chart
💡 Listen to These Episodes
- Ep #2 | Is Self-Publishing the Best Path for Today’s Creators?
- Ep #8 | Self-Publishing is a Team Sport
- Ep #20 | Do You Need to Hire Professional Editors for Your Book?
- Ep #25 | Author Branding 101: Building a Brand Beyond Your Books
- Ep #36 | The Indie Author’s Guide to Self-Publishing vs. Traditional Publishing
💡 Read These Blog Posts
- How Lulu Simplifies Self-Publishing
- 6 Steps to Create and Print a Book for Beginners
- 5 Visual Indicators Your Book Is Self-Published
💡 Watch These Videos
Sound Bites From This Episode
🎙️ [4:29] “There's no guarantee you're going to make money one way or the other, it really boils down to effort. And that is also true across all of the publishing paths.”
🎙️ [25:37] “It's not a one size fits all thing in any way when it comes to how much you're going to spend on self-publishing. If you're operating under the assumption that you can only find success as a self-published author if you sink a lot of money into any part of it… that's just not true.”
🎙️ [36:32] “I think these days people want to be more in control of their content and their money and their life. And I think that they're able to do that through self-publishing and they feel better doing it because of the fact that tools have gotten better.”
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Matt: Where's the recording button?
Lauren: I just pressed record.
Matt: Where does it say it's recording?
Lauren: Up here.
Matt: Oh.
[Podcast Intro]
Matt: Welcome back everybody. We are going to be talking about the myths of being self-published today. Or the myths of self-publishing, I should say. The stigmas. The cons, if you will.
Lauren: Perceived cons.
Matt: Perceived cons. I like that better.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Or negative perceptions.
Lauren: Ooh. Misconceptions?
Matt: Misconceptions, there you go.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: The common misconceptions about being self-published.
Lauren: Yes, we are. And we are also going to be doing it for episode number 50, which I think is a cool milestone to hit.
Matt: This is 50?
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: This is 50.
Lauren: This is 50.
Matt: I'm 50. Right now. I just turned 50 the other day.
Lauren: Oh yeah, happy belated.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: We haven't said that on the podcast yet.
Matt: This should be an episode about my birthday.
Lauren: Do you want to do an episode about your birthday?
Matt: Hell no.
Lauren: I didn't think so.
Matt: I didn't even want to have my 50th birthday.
Lauren: I didn't think so.
Matt: Well, happy belated birthday to me. What do your bracelets say? Do they say happy birthday, Matt?
Lauren: They do not. I'm so sorry. I'll make you one for next year.
Matt: If anybody wants to apply to be my co-host, just hit us up at podcast@lulu.com and put the subject line, 50 is great.
Lauren: I didn't say 50 wasn't great.
Matt: What do your bracelets say?
Lauren: My bracelets say Epcot Forever, I Wish I Was Reading, and Anti-Hero.
Matt: I actually like all three of those.
Lauren: Thank you.
Matt: The third one, not for the same reasons.
Lauren: I know.
Matt: But.
Lauren: I know.
Matt: Definitely good choices.
Lauren: Thank you.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: I actually really like the Epcot Forever.
Matt: I was going to say, I like the spacing on that one.
Lauren: Yeah. The color design on it is really cool. I’m proud of that one.
Matt: The color reminds me of some of the actual light show that they do.
Lauren: Oh, that was on purpose. Yeah.
Matt: Oh, okay.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Look at you.
Lauren: Thanks.
Matt: All right.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: I swear I should buy stock in Michael's just for the stuff you do alone. I could retire off it, probably.
Lauren: I mean, I try really hard not to spend that much on it. There's one walking distance from my apartment, so I'm there at least once a week.
Matt: I bet that's dangerous.
Lauren: It is. I live walking distance from a Michael's, a Target, a TJ Maxx, and a HomeGoods, and a Trader Joe's.
Matt: How do you have any money at all? Ever?
Lauren: I don't.
Matt: Oh, okay. There you go. Have you ever seen that… it was on Instagram, but it's like this thing and it says, everybody thinks I have a lot of money cause I'm always at Disney World, but what they don't know is I'm just actually really irresponsible.
Lauren: Yes. Yeah. My best friend definitely sent that to me and I was like, hmm, heard. It's fine.
Matt: All right.
Lauren: Anyway.
Matt: Misconceptions about being self-published - or self-publishing, I should say.
Lauren: You know, I kind of feel like we just set ourselves up for the perfect segue into one of these, even though it's going out of order on my outline.
Matt: Which would that be?
Lauren: You won't make any money self-publishing.
Matt: Oh.
Lauren: You'll be just as broke as me and all my irresponsible Disney spending if you try to self-publish your book.
Matt: Well, we can start with that one if you want.
Lauren: Let's do it.
[3:16] - You won’t make any money self-publishing
Matt: So there is a very large misconception that you won't make any money self-publishing. And the funny thing about this is I would say most people don't make any money or very little money, regardless of how they publish, but a lot of that's by design. Most people these days aren't publishing just to write a book and make money off of it, or at least not directly from the book. A lot of what we see coming through in self-publishing is content that's created for a different purpose. So it's to support their brand or grow their business or some other type of action or activity.
And so the myth that you won't make any money in self-publishing directly from your book, it's kind of true, but you know, you're not going to make… you're not guaranteed to make any money from whatever publishing avenue you choose, right? Even if you went after a traditional contract and you got one, it's not guaranteed that you'll get a huge advance or an advance at all. It's actually pretty common these days for traditional publishers to not really give you an advance.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: You just earn as you go.
Lauren: Especially depending on your genre. Yeah.
Matt: Yeah. And if they do give you an advance, it's not like it used to be. You're not going to get a $500,000 advance. That'd be great, but it's not going to happen for 99.9% of the people that actually get traditionally published. There's no guarantee you're going to make money one way or the other, it really boils down to effort. And that is also true across all of the publishing paths. Because even if you got traditionally published, you can talk to anybody who has been traditionally published for the most part, they'll tell you they didn't do a lot of marketing for my book.
Lauren: Yes. I can tell you that -
Matt: They wanted -
Lauren: As somebody who used to be -
Matt: - Right. Yeah.
Lauren: - somebody worked in publicity and marketing at a traditional publishing company.
Matt: They're choosing people based on the audience they already have, how much they think they'll be able to sell of that author's content. And then they rely on the author to do a lot of the marketing. Well, why not just cut the middleman out? If you're gonna do the marketing yourself anyways, and you're gonna rely on your audience that you've already been working hard to build, why not keep all your profits, all your royalties, all your rights, all your creative control, and your audience for that matter? So, I don't know.
Money is, I think, directly tied and relevant to the effort that you put into it and what your goals for that book are. If your goal is to make money from a book, you can make it in self-publishing. For sure.
Lauren: Absolutely you can.
Matt: Yeah. I just had a conversation with somebody in my office about one of the people that use Lulu that is literally doing hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue per month.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Per month, not per year.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: But that was their goal.
Lauren: It's insane what we see.
Matt: And they market like crazy. Their sole focus is that book. It just boils down to what are your goals and what's the level of effort you're willing to put in.
Lauren: Yeah. And I think there's also… I think a lot of, a lot of that particular myth comes from a misunderstanding of how revenue and royalties were.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Like even if you're disregarding Matt's initial point of it depends on what your goals are for a lot of people, they're using their books as a lead magnet, as a…
Matt: Right.
Lauren: - expert or, or knowledge -
Matt: To establish authority and credibility.
Lauren: Yes. Thank you. Thank you.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: That's the phrasing that I was looking for. So for a lot of people, they're not trying to make revenue off their book. And in that case -
Matt: Not directly.
Lauren: Not directly, but they are indirectly making it, if it is working the way it is intended to. So there's that argument. But disregarding that, if you are somebody who's like, no, I'm attempting to publish specifically with the intent of making money off of my book sales, and I don't believe that I will make as much money self-publishing as I would traditionally publishing. That's probably because you're fundamentally misunderstanding what is possible to make off of book sales as a self-published author. Because if you're used to something like the Amazon model - I was reading into the like, Kindle unlimited revenue model the other day and I was -
Matt: You must have been really bored.
Lauren: It was for work, but I was really bored, thank you very much. And it was rough, it was really rough reading through that and realizing like… the pennies that authors are making off of this? And also like, the just absolutely insane system of it depends on how many pages…
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: - people read? And it has to be like, a certain, like you have to get a certain amount of way through the book, and like individual - like it was just…
Matt: Well, and that's just on an ebook.
Lauren: Ridiculous.
Matt: But you’re right, yeah.
Lauren: Right, right.
Matt: You're, you’re paid based on pages read.
Lauren: Yes and if that's so if that's like, what you were thinking of when you're thinking of, oh, I'm not going to make any money as a self-published author because I've heard this is how people make money as Kindle Unlimited authors - those are totally different things. We have authors like Matt was just saying, if you're selling a print book direct, using Lulu Direct plugged into your website, you're keeping 100% of the profits on those book sales.
Matt: Yup.
Lauren: So you're not getting pennies per pages. Like that's just a misunderstanding.
Matt: It's a completely different business model.
Lauren: Yes. Absolutely. Yes. And -
Matt: You could sell one print book direct to one of your customers and make more money than if you sold ten ebooks.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Through KDP.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Or if your ebook got ten full downloads through KDP, whatever.
Lauren: Absolutely.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah. That's definitely something you did a whole session on this at Author Nation recently.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: That was - I thought was great.
Matt: Thanks.
Lauren: You're welcome. All your sessions were great at Author Nation.
Matt: Mmm. I don't know if I believe you.
Lauren: All right.
Matt: Well
Lauren: I don't know how to argue with you on that one, so okay.
Matt: Yeah, I - you know.
Lauren: No, they were great. It’s so fine.
Matt: It’s fine.
Lauren: It’s so fine.
Matt: It’s fine. It’ll be all right.
Lauren: I hope so.
Matt: It’s okay.
Lauren: Also, just kind of to point out one of the differences between self-publishing and traditional publishing, in terms of revenue is that - or actually, I guess, two of the two of the differences. Self-published authors, while they don't get that advance that some traditionally published authors get, they do start pocketing their revenue immediately.
Matt: Well, by immediately, yes, in the sense that when a sale comes through, it's automatically attributed to the author. But again, it depends on your business model. If you're utilizing distribution, you're not going to see that money for 60 to 90 days.
Lauren: No.
Matt: But if you're traditionally published, you're not going to see a dime after the advance until you earn out of that advance.
Lauren: Which could be never.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: And very often is never.
Matt: Absolutely.
Lauren: But then also, unlike traditional publishing, self-published authors keep the rights to their work. And so it is up to you then how you choose to repurpose that, reuse it, re-monetize it in different ways. So if you want to add a new revenue stream by adding a different format, maybe publishing an audiobook version of it
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Doing exclusive editions, stuff like that. You don't have that kind of creative control over your product availability -
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: - as a traditionally published author.
Matt: That's a good point too, because right now there are more TV and movie studios in existence than there ever has been, and they're all starving for content. And there are a lot of self-published authors that are getting their works picked up by some of these TV and movie production houses. Every company, every channel on the planet is now doing their own original programming, but half that content is coming from either self-published authors or screenwriters who have read or scouted some self-publishing work or have done it themselves. There's a great time right now to be involved in creating content and having the rights to be able to shop it to places like this, or hire somebody to help you shop it. But yeah, that's an important component there to self-publishing these days is owning all those rights.
Lauren: Absolutely. I think maybe now more than ever, honestly.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Definitely. Again, the money argument is just - I just think there's so many variables there and people try to throw out blanket statements like that, but it really is just based on your goals, what you're doing and then how much effort you put into. But there's definitely money to be made in it. And we've seen other people in the industry do the math. Jane Friedman and other people put out things where if you're doing everything right, more than likely, nine times out of ten, you will probably make more money in the long run self-publishing than you would, you know, in any other format. Now again, you can't ever hope to attain the financial levels from traditional publishing that some of these other people have done that are… I keep wanting to say the name of one and I just won't, I won't name the nameless there, but there's money to be made, I think.
Lauren: Yeah, I think there's also something in what you just said right there. It's about the amount of effort that you put in. It is, it is. The only truth to the myth that you will not make any money self-publishing is if you fail to put any effort into the books that you're self-publishing.
Matt: Yeah. And it's hard. I mean, don't - I'm not trying to sit up here and be cavalier about it.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: It is hard. Like, the people we see that are really making a lot of money off of self-published books, it's almost a full time job for them to market and sell their books. Now that's their goal. They're happy doing that, for the most part, so that's what they're doing. And there's always a happy medium too. There is a world that exists where you're making good money, or at least the money you want to make, and you're not killing yourself every day to market and sell your books. It's a sliding scale.
Lauren: Sure.
Matt: But you're right. The more effort you put in, the more money you'll make. The less effort, the less money you'll make. Zero effort, you're not going to make any money. That's going to be true of any particular publishing path.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: For sure. Check that off.
Matt: What other myth do you want to debunk?
Lauren: Oh, you had bust right there, but that's okay.
Matt: I guess bust is a good word too.
Lauren: Well.
Matt: I like the word debunk.
Lauren: I do too.
Matt: Although.
Lauren: But although I like myth busters.
Matt: At the risk of being made fun of, I'm not sure the root origins of the word debunk. Like any other word that you put de in front of, I would assume bunk is actually a word, but if I think about the word bunk, I think of something completely different. So debunk, maybe I shouldn't have said that because again, at the risk of getting made fun of, I'm not quite sure where that came from or what it actually means. So maybe I will say bust.
Lauren: No, you're not wrong. The etymology of the word debunk comes from the prefix de meaning to remove -
Matt: Right.
Lauren: - and bunk, which means nonsense.
Matt: Oh, okay. Debunk.
Lauren: Yeah.
[12:46] - You have to spend a lot of money to self-publish
Matt: Which myth do you want to debunk next? Which myth do you want to remove the nonsense around?
Lauren: Oh, I like that. Maybe -
Matt: Next?
Lauren: So, the direct correlation to you won't make any money self-publishing is that you have to spend a lot of money in order to self-publish.
Matt: Yeah, that's a good one.
Lauren: Successfully. Yeah.
Matt: Okay, let's debunk that one.
Lauren: All right, let's do it.
Matt: Let's get rid of this nonsense. Now. The caveat here is that self-publishing by definition implies you're doing this all yourself. And technically, yes, you can write, publish, market, and sell your book all on your own. And you might even do a great job of all those things. Potentially. But the reality of it is, and we've said this - if we've said it once, we've said it a hundred times on one of these podcasts - you should invest some money into your book. You should spend some money to self-publish, but you can absolutely do it for almost free. And certainly you don't have to spend a lot of money -
Lauren: Right.
Matt: - to self-publish by any means. I don't care what platform you use or what you're doing, but if you're going to try and put out a high quality book for whatever reason, whether it's to make a lot of money or use that as a lead magnet for your business or use it as an authority builder for yourself to try and establish yourself as a thought leader in some space - any number of reasons why you might write and publish a book, it doesn't matter, but the goal really should be to put out a piece of quality work. And so if that is the case, yeah, there's going to be some costs that are going to come in, right?
Lauren: Right. But it's up to you what you prioritize spending that…
Matt: Right.
Lauren: - on, across the board. It's up to you what you prioritize setting your budget to and also what you prioritizing spending money on.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: I had a conversation with an author recently that she was talking to me about, like -
Matt: I can't stop eating these fake M&Ms now.
Lauren: I'm honestly surprised you are.
Matt: They were weird at first, but now I'm just kind of like they're just sitting over there, I'm like… I should eat another one.
Lauren: Well, that's how I feel about M&Ms in general. So I understand that.
Matt: Really?
Lauren: I love M&Ms.
Matt: What are your favorite ones?
Lauren: Dark chocolate M&Ms.
Matt: Wait, I've never seen a dark chocolate M&M.
Lauren: What? It's like the purple bag. They're regular M&M colors, but instead of milk chocolate inside they’re dark chocolate.
Matt: I've never seen that.
Lauren: Oh, they're my favorite.
Matt: Have you ever had the, it's like a coffee caramel one?
Lauren: No, because I don't like coffee.
Matt: Really?
Lauren: Yeah, that's why I drink Monster.
Matt: Oh, that's right.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Well, anyways, that one's really good.
Lauren: That does sound really good.
Matt: And then peanut butter.
Lauren: I also really like the pretzel ones.
Matt: Ew.
Lauren: And they used to do like, crunchy ones that had like, a hard shell inside, like a wafery…
Matt: Really?
Lauren: Mmhmm.
Matt: That's weird.
Lauren: Yeah. I like a candy that has a little good crunch to it.
Matt: Hmm.
Lauren: It's fine. I was talking to an author recently that -
Matt: About M&Ms?
Lauren: Not about M&Ms, oddly enough.
Matt: Sorry, we're moving on. I thought we were still on M&Ms.
Lauren: Yeah, no, no. I’m - You do whatever you need to do.
Matt: That’s my fault.
Lauren: I was talking to an author recently and she was saying to me that she was sitting in all these sessions. This was at Author Nation. She was sitting in all these sessions that were talking about all these different tools and all these different software that you could use to format your book and do your cover design and all this stuff and all these things that you needed to do and all these different tools that she needed and everybody was getting really excited about them and she was talking to me and she was like… Do I really need all of these tools? Do I need to really spend this money on all of these tools?
And I was like, well, no, that's up to you. These tools are designed for people that need help with formatting their interiors or doing whatever. How much experience do you have with page formatting? And she was like, well, I'm a graphic designer. And I was like, yeah, ma'am, you don't need… you don't need any of these tools. If you already have InDesign and you are already a pro at InDesign, you don't need to go buy the extra software you can, or hire a freelancer to do.
If you feel comfortable, if you feel confident in your own ability to do these things, save that money for something else in your budget that you don't feel confident about your ability to do, like hiring an editor.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Hiring a publicist to help you with your pre-launch plans or something like that, you know? You choose how you want to spend the money that you're gonna put into self-publishing your book.
Matt: Or.
Lauren: Or?
Matt: You barter with other creators.
Lauren: That too.
Matt: That's a lot more popular these days. There are a lot of people out there who are creating different types of content and you might actually know somebody who's a graphic designer that has a pretty good understanding of Adobe InDesign or some of these other tools. And maybe you're really good at something else, whether that's editing or potentially some other facet of the production process. Or maybe you just have a lot of information knowledge around publishing that that person might potentially want. Or something completely different, by the way. Like maybe you just own like a really boss dog lawnmower and they need their lawn -
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: You know I'm saying? Like you can you can trade for that stuff. There's nothing wrong with that. I've talked to plenty of people that they trade for things and they're creators and the whole goal is to get your content out there but sometimes you've got to get creative with how you do that. And so I think if you have a skill set that somebody else might need, and they have a skill set that you need, why not? What's the worst that happens is they're like, no, my yard was cut last week. I don't need that. Which by the way, now that I see these, I do recall seeing the purple bag, but I was wrong about what I was saying. The one that I really like is caramel cold brew.
Lauren: Okay.
Matt: Super good. But they also have just a straight caramel one in the blue bag.
Lauren: Those I like.
Matt: Yeah. Those are amazing.
Lauren: Those I like.
Matt: Now I did see that for the holidays, they're dropping this peanut butter and jelly flavor.
Lauren: Oh.
Matt: What are your thoughts on that?
Lauren: I think that could be great or it could be disgusting.
Matt: Man, I'm leaning towards great.
Lauren: I'm leaning towards great too.
Matt: They got four and a half stars already.
Lauren: Okay
Matt: Now.
Lauren: Does it say when they're dropping them?
Matt: Looks like they just came out.
Lauren: Okay, I’ll keep an eye out for them.
Matt: Which flavor do you think got the worst star rating?
Lauren: Hmm.
Matt: I didn't know this was a flavor by the way, but -
Lauren: Mint?
Matt: No, although that sounds thoroughly disgusting.
Lauren: Yeah, I don't like mint and chocolate together at all.
Matt: Pumpkin pie. Two stars out of five.
Lauren: Yeah, I understand that.
Matt: Yeah, this is on the M&M's site, by the way.
Lauren: Fascinating.
Matt: I don't know, maybe I need to try pumpkin pie once. No?
Lauren: I'm not a pumpkin girl at all.
Matt: I'm not either.
Lauren: I'm not, I've never, like I do no - I am never going to give anybody else a hard time for being basic and loving something that is joyful and wonderful, like pumpkin spice lattes. I am not a coffee drinker. I also do not understand the pumpkin spice thing at all. Like, it's just not something - I don't like pumpkin beer. I don't like pumpkin pie. I don't like pumpkin, like -
Matt: Wait.
Lauren: - flavored everything in the fall.
Matt: Stop, stop, stop, stop. People drink pumpkin beer?
Lauren: I think so. I think those are like the two main beer flavors around the fall is like, Oktoberfest and pumpkin. And I always get really annoyed about it because -
Matt: I'm so over this conversation.
Lauren: You're the one that started it, so.
Matt: That's often the case.
Lauren: This is another myth of self-publishing.
Matt: The point is you don't have to spend a bunch of money -
Lauren: No.
Matt: - to self-publish, right? But you should invest in some good editing at the bare minimum. I would love to say, and we have said this on many occasions, there are several areas where if you can afford it, you should invest. That is editing, probably first and foremost, secondarily, I would say cover design, and then thirdly, if you need the help, formatting. But there's a, there's a lot of free or low cost tools out there that'll help you with formatting. And that's not something that necessarily - I hope I don't get, you know, at-ed for this, but formatting is not necessarily something you have to have a lot of creative ability to do. It's just, it's a little more of a technical thing, and so editing and cover design, for sure. But anyways, as we were saying, you can get through that for relatively inexpensively. You can technically do it without spending a dime. Should you? I don't know about that, but at the end of the day, it's not a lot. And so choosing where to invest those funds in your project, I think, is the best way to really sort of prioritize how you get through the production process and what your end product looks like.
Lauren: Yeah. I mean, to your point just there, something like formatting, it's not so much about the design as it is the technicality of interior formatting. It's a very tedious process to correctly do the interior formatting of your book file. But that doesn't mean that it's impossible to do. So that is the kind of thing that if you say, okay, like, you know, I want to save a few hundred bucks or whatever it costs on hiring an interior formatter. So I'm going to take a Saturday afternoon and I'm going to really like, dive into this and get it done.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: That's the the cost decision that you are making one way or another on that. I've also I'm going to link in the show notes for this episode, one of our early episodes that we did on all the different types of freelancers and stuff like that that you can -
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: - hire to help you -
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: - with your self-publishing.
Matt: And again, these are things too where you can do them one at a time. Most times you can pay with a credit card or they have some sort of payment plan if it's a large enough amount. Like, this isn't stuff where you have to save up $20,000 before you approach the work at all by any means. And we've also talked about, and we'll link to the EFA, so the Editorial Freelancers Association. They publish every year sort of a schedule of what average rates should look like. So you'll have an idea of if you get a quote from an editor and whether it kind of falls in line with what the industry standards are. I won't go too far down that road because you are linking to the other one, but I was going to go into things to look for when you're hiring an editor, but you'll just have to listen to that.
Lauren: We’ve done a -
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: We've done a whole episode -
Matt: That’s fine.
Lauren: - on that specifically. We've done a whole episode on hiring freelance editors and we've done a whole episode on other types of freelancers that you can hire. So it sounds -
Matt: We did?
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Man, that's pretty cool. Okay, yeah, so those are production costs or this is what you would be paying for right after your manuscript's done, assuming that you're gonna look for some of that help. There are other costs potentially in self-publishing. Again, it's gonna depend on what platform you're gonna use ultimately to take your book to market. Obviously the best one is Lulu. Very few fees, if any, involved there. There are print costs if you're doing print. So if you're gonna do print, which you should, we've already talked about that too, because ebooks suck. No, I can't say that?
Lauren: No, you can if you want to.
Matt: I feel like I probably shouldn't say that because the next author conference we go to I might get in some hot water. Maybe that's why my session attendance has dropped. Maybe I'm talking too much trash about ebooks on this show. I love ebooks, guys. I'm just kidding.
Lauren: Let's see what happens.
Matt: Yeah, I've just been joking. Ebooks are great. But there are print costs if you're doing a print book, right? You're going to want to order a proof copy for yourself to make sure it looks right. So that's going to run you anywhere from $5 to $10, depending on what kind of book you're creating. And then every time obviously somebody orders a print book from you, there's a cost to print it, but it's basically a pass-through cost. So it's not like it's necessarily coming out of your pocket immediately. And again, that's going to happen regardless of where you are or how you're doing it. And then publishing costs, if you're self-publishing, there really shouldn't be any cost to quote unquote publish. You know what I mean? The cost should really come in at the delivery of the book itself, whether it's digital delivery and maybe there's a fee for that or print delivery. And obviously you're going to pay the manufacturing costs there for the book.
Lauren: Yeah. I think a lot of the times that I'm hearing people talk about the cost to print books and that being it being cost prohibitive in self-publishing to print books, I'm always a little bit confused about why that's the case.
Matt: I feel like you're baiting me into a conversation where you know I'm going to get real angry. I'm just, I'm going to keep eating these fake M&Ms and let you go on.
Lauren: Maybe I was a little bit. It's okay.
Matt: I know you were.
Lauren: It’s all right.
Matt: I don't want to alienate the last few people that might actually come hear me speak at the next conference.
Lauren: All right. That's fair. Or maybe you'll bring in a whole new audience of people that are really enthusiastic about your chewing on air.
Matt: Are we now -
Lauren: I can't wait to edit this episode.
Matt: Are we now an ASMR show?
Lauren: I think so. I think you've made us one.
Matt: You can't even hear me chewing. I have the headphones on. Lauren's mom, that's not - see, that’s why we wear headphones. I did not hear any chewing of these fake M&Ms. Which, maybe that's how you can tell they're fake if somebody just hands them to you? Or I guess they would say M&M on them, too.
Lauren: Also, those colors are definitely not M&M.
Matt: Well, they're Halloween ones.
Lauren: I see.
Matt: But I checked the date. They're not expired.
Lauren: That’s good, unlike all the Oreos that we have? Okay, we're so -
Matt: You know what these are called, by the way? Halloween Milkies.
Lauren: I don't like that at all.
Matt: That's weird. That's why I had to try them. A, I didn't know it was in the bag. And then when I realized they were fake M&Ms, I kind of understood the whole milky thing, but I don't know. It is weird.
Lauren: I do like that they're black though. The black and purple ones I like.
Matt: You would.
Lauren: Of course I would. Anyway.
Matt: Do I have to pay for marketing as a self-published author?
Lauren: You don't have to, but they are -
Matt: I get it for free?
Lauren: No.
Matt: Oh.
Lauren: There are plenty of ways that you can market your book for free or for very little cost. But this is another one of those things. This is something that it is going to be as expensive or inexpensive as you choose. This is something that you are going to determine your budget. If you have a marketing background and you think that you're really good at this and you can handle this on your own without spending too much money on it.
If you have an audience already, if you are somebody who is already speaking to, like, you already have a dedicated audience of fans and followers and you're publishing a book in an effort to monetize your existing content and better connect with your fans and followers, then maybe you don't have to spend as much money on marketing because you can get away with just some really well-timed emails and social posts to your existing fans.
It's not a one size fits all thing in any way when it comes to how much you're going to spend on self-publishing, but that, that means then that if you're operating under the assumption that you can only find success as a self-published author if you sink a lot of money into any part of it - whether it's the production of your book, the marketing of your book or the running of your author brand or business - that's just not true.
Matt: Yeah. Yeah, I think you can break down the several different areas where people think they may have to spend a lot of money. And when you start digging into each of those areas, you actually don't have to sink a lot of money to - you’re right. And there's again, if you search hard enough, there's a lot of great free to low cost or no cost ways to do these things and marketing is definitely one of them.
Publicity, running your, your author business again, there are lots of low cost to no cost options for tools you might need or things like that. I think it just involves doing your homework. But at the end of the day, this myth, this idea that you have to self-publish successfully, you have to sink a lot of money into it, and that's just not the case.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: If you do enough research, if you do enough homework, you will find that you can self-publish successfully and make money without investing a lot of money.
Lauren: Right.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Right. I think that both of these so far, this idea that you have to spend a lot of money and also the idea that you're not gonna make a lot of money ultimately comes down to… these are things under your control as a self-published author. So do not let these be the things that stop you from self-publishing. There are plenty of reasons that you can logic out for why one publishing path is better than the other, no matter which one it is.
There are plenty of ways that you could sit here and go: maybe it's not worth my time to publish a book, maybe it is worth my time to publish a book. I don't know. You can go back and forth on it. But these two specifically, that you're not going to make any money and that you have to spend a lot of money should not be the things that stop you because they are both things that you have control over as a self-published author.
Matt: I also think these are myths that were put out. It's propaganda by the traditional publishing houses and the people that work for them.
Lauren: You're so right.
Matt: I believe that.
Lauren: Yeah. I mean, I'm not going to argue with you at all on that one. Like I just, that's not even a conspiracy theory. That just seems like reality.
Matt: Yeah.
[27:41] - There’s no credibility in self-publishing
Matt: So this next one, I think is again, very prevalent, although it's a lot better than it used to be in terms of the stigma. I think even just in the last three or four years, it's gotten even ten times better than that. But it's this idea that if you publish a book and you self-publish it, that there's no credibility there because a traditional publisher didn't do it. And that magically having a book traditionally published means it's a better book for some reason. And I know what the theories are, are the explanations there. Again, I think that's propaganda that's been just perpetrated from years and years and years of traditional publishing models. But at the end of the day, there are so many great self-published books and nobody, almost nobody cares if that book was self-published or traditionally published.
Lauren: I can see you looking right at me -
Matt: I know.
Lauren: - in the camera right now. Yes.
Matt: Nobody cares.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: And most people couldn't tell the difference.
Lauren: Right.
Matt: Unless the book came from Amazon. It’ll literally fall apart in their hands. But outside of that.
Lauren: Yeah, let's add a little asterisk to that. If your self-published book is well designed, if it looks like it was professionally designed, if you put in the work or put in the time or put in the money to have a professionally designed book. And you have it printed by one of the more reputable print-on-demand companies. Mine, I recommend Lulu.com.
Matt: You should.
Lauren: You will have a print book that at the end of the day is indistinguishable from a book that was printed at a traditional publishing house.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Their methods of printing them are more or less the same. The machines they're using are more or less the same. Everything about it, the quality, the standard, all of that is the same. This is another one again that if you're - in terms of like, actual physical appearance of the book, you as the author control whether or not a reader would be able to tell that your book is not traditionally published. Because I have seen books, I've seen self-published books by authors that really put in the time and the work to get them to be absolutely beautiful that even I, as somebody who has worked hands-on with books for over a decade, would not have been able to tell that this book was self-published if I hadn't known that it was self-published.
Matt: A decade’s ten years, right?
Lauren: Mmhmm.
Matt: Okay, just checking.
Lauren: You doing the math to see if I'm old enough to have a...
Matt: I was mathin’ the math and making sure that it mathed properly.
Lauren: It does math properly.
Matt: Yeah. Okay.
Lauren: I've worked in the publishing industry for twelve years.
Matt: Either way, I agree with what statement that you made.
Lauren: Thanks.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah. But also further than that, even further than just like the physicality of the book, a lot of your average consumers are not digging deep into publishing imprints. Most people, present company excluded, are not going to be like, digging through the Goodreads metadata of a book to see like, oh, who published this? And that's also not how they're like determining whether or not a book is good.
Matt: Well, even more so outside of the world of fiction, right?
Lauren: Oh, no, especially, especially in nonfiction.
Matt: Well, yeah.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Well, nonfiction people are rarely gonna go on Goodreads for anything.
Lauren: Well, sure.
Matt: But you know, if you hand somebody a book, right, and this book, the sole goal of creating this book is to land more, let's say consulting jobs for whatever it is you do. Maybe it's supply chain logistics and you're just great at it. And you wrote this small book about supply chain logistics or whatever. Handing somebody that book, A, we've already talked about this, way better than handing them a business card that they'll just throw away.
But B, there's absolutely no chance they're going to take that book, look at the spine and then say, was this self-published? Like it just, it doesn't happen. Nobody cares. So that stigma is long gone, I think, of whether you're writing fiction, nonfiction, reference, textbooks, it doesn't matter. If you put out a quality product, that's all people care about.
Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. And we've talked about this before - and I'm also, I'm going to preface this with, I'm fully aware of the fact that I am biased. I work for a self-publishing company, I realize where I'm coming from with the bias on this one. We've talked about this before about the credibility of having a book published. And a lot of times when we go to conferences and events and you're going to speaker sessions, more often than not, the speakers in question will have a book that they have published that is related to the topic they're speaking on and will plug it in their sessions.
And I always, as somebody who finds that very interesting, even if I don't wind up getting the book, if I liked the session, I will make note of it in my session notes. I will go find the book on Bookshop.org or I'll search for the author's website or something like that, and I will find their book, and I will add it to my notes from the conference. And I've started doing actually the opposite of that where I will check to see who the publisher is on their books and I'll get a little… not disappointed if they're traditionally published, but I'll always kind of be like. You know, I bet you could have self-published that, sold it directly from your website, built your brand even further.
Matt: Yeah. And on the flip side of that, I read a lot of nonfiction books, especially marketing related ones. And I can't tell you how many times I've gotten a book on some form of marketing or marketing in general, whatever it was, that was traditionally published, some by some well-known marketers, and the books are just absolute garbage.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Just flaming dumpster fire piles of garbage. So, I think that goes both ways too. And I think that's why I always got a little bit hot at the idea that, you know, there's no credibility in being self-published. Because to be honest with you, there's a lot of books out there that are traditionally published that shouldn't have been. They either got that deal because of who they were and it was ghost written, it wasn't even written by them.
Or they did write it and that's where these big piles of garbage were produced. Just because you're so and so and you had some stroke of luck on some early stage startup or whatever that might be. That doesn't mean you're qualified to put out a book on some topic. So, I think it goes both ways. I've definitely read some garbage from traditionally published marketers and business people and authors in general.
Lauren: Absolutely. The point is that the credibility of your book comes from your reputation building and how much you can actually like, make the point of: I am a thought leader. I am an expert in this. I am somebody who's guaranteed to deliver the reading experience that you want out of this, because I'm a reliable fiction author in whatever genre it is that we're writing. You're responsible for that credibility in the same way you're responsible for the content of your book.
And more and more, as we get further away from the stigma of self-publishing, people are realizing that the credibility comes from the fact that you wrote the book at all, and the fact that the content of your book holds up the premise that you've provided of I am here to deliver something helpful and useful and informative.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: And people don't really care whether it was like, traditionally published or self-published.
Matt: Yeah. And that's a big one, right? The fact that you wrote a book at all.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: I mean, that's not easy. And if you actually wrote it and did the work and put in the work to get it published, I think people subconsciously understand that that's just not some super easy thing to go out and do.
Lauren: It's really not.
Matt: Even in this day of age of AI. Again, handing somebody a book or somebody seeing that you have a book, that's an accomplishment in and of itself. Being able to deliver a book that actually adds value to that person's life. I mean, that doesn't go unrecognized or unnoticed. That's where I think credibility comes from. Yeah, I agree with you.
Lauren: Absolutely. So I think we're also seeing kind of like hand in hand with that the reality of the self-publishing stigma shrinking is that we're seeing authors ranging from New York Times bestsellers to entrepreneurial experts, like people that Matt was talking about, marketing experts, stuff like that, to Taylor Swift herself, choosing to go some kind of -
Matt: I, I should have - I’m just realizing - yeah.
Lauren: You absolutely should have read that bullet point all the way -
Matt: I knew it. I knew it.
Lauren: - choosing to go with a more direct self-publishing route. Even if it's not exactly self-publishing, whether it's hybrid publishing or something in the middle of that. We're seeing authors - And we are even seeing authors that started out as traditionally published authors and are eventually, once their contracts end, looking into the self-publishing route instead. I think we see more and more of that happening lately.
Matt: I think you just wanted to say Taylor Swift.
Lauren: It's been a minute.
Matt: It is true though.
Lauren: I hadn't said her name yet this episode.
Matt: I don't know if that trend is so much about the stigma not being real anymore versus the sheer ease that comes into play when you want to actually directly publish and sell something because of the technology that has made advancements just in the last three to five years. What you can do right now to either self or hybrid publish a book, a good quality book, is light years different than three years ago, five years ago, seven years ago, for sure. And the technology that's been advancing, not just with some of the tools, but even the printing and the machines themselves that digitally print stuff on demand, the quality that comes from a digitally printed book is mind boggling sometimes how good it can be.
So yeah, I think the stigma dying off helps with that. But I think more of that is just, I think these days people want to be more in control of their content and their money and their life. And I think that they're able to do that through self-publishing and they feel better doing it because of the fact that tools have gotten better. It is less expensive now to do some of these things and the quality of printed books, especially digital printed-on-demand books has… I mean, the game there has been stepped up and elevated tenfold -
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: - since five, ten years ago.
Lauren: So maybe then in that case, it's that not necessarily the stigma has completely faded away from that, but that the practicality and availability of self-publishing is enticing enough and the benefits of it are well understood enough to outweigh the perceived negative connotations.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Of self-publishing.
Matt: And I think you couple that with this creator movement that's been going on, right? So, and the catalyst really was 2020, right?
Lauren: Yep.
Matt: So let's set aside Taylor Swift and her proclivity to do things for herself.
Lauren: I guess.
Matt: Which we all love, right? But outside of that, you know, in 2020, even us here at Lulu, we saw this explosion of people, talented people, by the way, who all of a sudden found themselves at home. Maybe they were out of a job, maybe they were working from home, whatever that might be, or maybe there's some combination, but more and more content was created at the onset of those COVID lockdowns that found its way naturally into self-publishing because, again, of the availability of these tools, how well they work and the fact that the barrier to entry was not a massive price tag. You know what I mean? It was just easier.
So I think this creator movement coupled with some of these other things is really what has kind of given, I guess, a tailwind to self-publishing. And I think that when you look at where we are today with it and all of those things, that stigma of being a self-published author just can't survive in an environment like that, where there's just too many things working for you as a self-published author, too many opportunities available to you. I just don't think anybody cares about that stigma anymore.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: If you can go and self-publish, I don't know, a health and wellness journal, right, a low content, really cool piece of content and make $5,000 a month off of it and work less at your cubicle or whatever that might be, like. Why wouldn't you?
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: People are doing that left and right now. So I don't know. I just think less people care about that stigma or what others think. And they're more like, hey, I can supplement my income or I can make a better life by doing these things. And I can have more control over every aspect of what I create. And I just think that's more appealing. Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah. It's worth it. It's worth the cost, whatever the cost is.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: I'll tell you these fake M&Ms aren't worth the cost though.Now I regret that I half the bag. I'm not going to say where they're from because I might get in trouble, but… actually I'll eat one more purple one and then I'll be done.
Lauren: Mmhmm.
Matt: Well it matches our set.
Lauren: Mmhmm. Famous last words. It's always just one more until the whole bag is empty.
[39:31] - Wrap-up
Matt: I mean, I think those are the three biggest myths that we hear -
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Just being in the self-published industry, but also, you know, we do go to a lot of author events and conferences and we do talk to a lot of other people who are not in self-publishing, but in the publishing industry. I think those are the three biggest ones. And I think even some of those are understood by people who are not in the world of publishing. I think there's lots of little sort of micro-stigmas or things that… I don't think they're that important. And I think at the end of the day, you just shouldn't care what other people think.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Whatever works the best for you and your content, that's what you should do.
Lauren: I think that's really honing in on what the whole point of self-publishing was in the first place. Figuring out there's a solution that fits you and your goals. And if traditional publishing is not that solution for you, here's an alternative option. Figure out what works for you. Listen to some of our other episodes. Read some resources online. You know, whatever you have to do. Ask other authors. Whatever it is that you have to do to figure out what is going to be the solution that works best for you, your business goals, your writing goals, your brand, your dreams as an author, whatever it is, and go with that route, regardless of what you have or have not heard, especially if it's stuff like this, that is so clearly incorrect.
Matt: And whatever you hear on those older episodes, I love ebooks, don't listen to that.
Lauren: Number one ebook reader right here.
Matt: Number one ebook fan right here, number one. Go ebooks, yes, love it.
Lauren: Alternatively, if you're somebody who has not come to one of Matt's sessions because you are so mad at his hard stance against ebooks, you should come to the next one and convince him of why he's wrong and he needs to be a Kindle convert immediately.
Matt: Nobody listens to this show. And the ones that do, they're probably not showing up at the events I speak at because I mean, why would they?
Lauren: Why wouldn't they?
Matt: Because they probably have better things to do than to come to some conference where I'm going to get on stage and say ebooks suck. I mean I wouldn't do that. I love ebooks. I'm just saying. That's probably what they think would happen, is I just get up there and light a bunch of Kindle readers on fire and dance around them. Although actually that probably more entertaining than what I usually do on stage. So I'll have to think about that one. Do you think I could get sued if I did that?
Lauren: I don't know if you're allowed to have pyrotechnics inside a conference center. But maybe we could burn effigies of ereaders? Or, you know, out in the parking lot, maybe?
Matt: Yeah. That has a whole different context though.
Lauren: Okay.
Matt: That just looks like some sad dude who's mad at his Kindle, is just setting it on fire in the parking lot. I don't think that's the same impact.
Lauren: No, probably not.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: No. We could find a non-fiery way to destroy them.
Matt: I mean, it does take some of the fun of it, but I'm open to other ideas.
Lauren: Have you ever dropped a boulder on technology from a reasonably high height? Small boulder. Big rock.
Matt: I've never lived anywhere where there's boulders.
Lauren: Okay, I mean like a, you know, like soccer ball size rock, so.
Matt: Still I grew up in Florida. We have alligators. I've never -
Lauren: Have you ever?
Matt: - dropped an alligator on anything.
Lauren: Have you ever tried -
Matt: Maybe I could feed a Kindle reader to an alligator.
Lauren: I was going to say. Feed a Kindle to an alligator.
Matt: That'd be sick.
Lauren: I think that would be animal cruelty
Matt: Or a shark. I agree. because it's a kindle. Just kidding. I love them. I would feed it to an alligator because I would love that alligator and I wanted to have the best reading device and experience on the planet. I just threw up a little bit. Sorry. Ha ha ha.This thing's off the rails.
Lauren: This is... Alright, I think we have to call it here.
Matt: Yeah. If anybody is actually still listening.
Lauren: I'm so sorry.
Matt: Yeah, thank you. Condolences? I don't know. What's the right thing here? But otherwise, yeah, I mean...
Lauren: Thanks for listening.
Matt: Thanks for sticking it out. We'll probably see you next week?
Lauren: We will see you next week, somehow. Unless. Unless one of us has been fed to an alligator by an angry Kindle reader.
Matt: Anything's possible.
Lauren: Anything is possible. But in the meantime… If you have any questions about anything we talked about in here, other topics, myths that you think we did not disprove or debunk. Other -
Matt: Or if you want to debunk them yourself by being a living example, just come over to Lulu, create a book and sell the hell out of it.
Lauren: Love that idea.
Matt: Stick it to the man.
Lauren: Perfect. And email us at podcast@lulu.com if you have any questions on how to do that.
Matt: I guess.
Lauren: Or listen to our past episodes.
Matt: Yeah, that's better.
Lauren: Anything else that we can help you with? We're here.
Matt: Yep.
Lauren: Burning Kindles.
Matt: You're gonna get us in so much trouble.
Lauren: I actually do love my Kindle.
Matt: I know.
Lauren: Thank you very much, so. Sorry about it.
Matt: By proxy, I love Kindles.
Lauren: Uh-huh. You also -
Matt: Cause you love your Kindle.
Lauren: I did actually get on recording in this episode, you saying that you love Taylor Swift's ingenuity.
Matt: I mean, I don't know if I said it quite like that, but okay. I'll give you that one.
Lauren: I got it.
Matt: All right.
Lauren: I got it. Thanks for listening everyone, you've all heard it here first.
Matt: Later.
Lauren: Bye.