Willow Wraith Press

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Welcome to a new series all about self-publishing, where A.J. Calvin and Alex Scheuermann look back at our journey into self-publishing and shine a spotlight on some tips, tricks, and advice that we wish we knew sooner. Our goal is to release 2 articles a month until we’ve covered all the interesting topics we can think of related to self-publishing. The articles we have planned include: when to hit publish; advice for covers; advice for interior formatting; newsletters; budgets; ARCs when, why & financials; and more.

Self-publishing is simultaneously very simple to do but with a million tiny details that you need to make a decision about along the way. Here at Willow Wraith Press (WWP), we hope to give you a bit of guidance to help you make the best decision for you and your story. Like with most things, there’s no one right answer for everyone. The important part is intentionality. If you stray from the norm, do it with purpose!

One caveat, WWP as a group is focused on speculative fiction, mostly sci-fi and fantasy. This advice may not apply if you write in another genre such as non-fiction.

Without further ado, onto the advice.

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What is Self-Publishing?

You’re writing a story. Excellent! That’s great to hear. Do you hope to share it with other people? Perhaps make a bit of money (or just self-sustain your hobby)? This is where publishing comes into play. 

There are a few ways to publish:

Traditional publishing (aka. trad pub)

You sign a contract for the rights to your manuscript in exchange for an up front payment and royalties if that advance earns out. The publisher will then edit, create a cover, print, market, and sell your story as a book. They often have deals with bookstores and a well established distribution network.

The juggernauts of the trad pub space are known as The Big 5 (Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster). They own the lion’s share of the publishing market and most authors are vying for their big contracts and to sit beside the biggest authors in the industry. You might hear of other publishers that are owned by one of these parent companies. For example Tor Publishing Group is owned by Macmillan.

Small or Indie Press

There are many small companies that offer smaller contracts for your stories, but they also have less resources to support you. This can be a good best-of-both-worlds type option if you find the right press. But it can also be a significantly lower up front payment. And less marketing resources may mean more of the burden is on you for getting your book in readers’ hands or bookstores.

Vanity Press

A company that charges authors an up-front fee to publish a book. They will typically provide some amount of editing*, create a cover, and publish your book. Since they’ve already made their money, there is little incentive for them to help market the book. Many authors consider these vanity presses a scam to part desperate authors from their money. Friendly tip, if a publisher contacts you and you aren’t already selling thousands of copies of your book, it is probably a vanity press.

*editing may be poor quality or only offered as an extra fee.

Hybrid Press

Somewhere between small and vanity presses. The distinction largely depends on the specific services and fees. Do your research carefully before signing with a hybrid press.

Serialization

Releasing your story chapters at a time has been around since magazines or periodicals and has recently shifted because of the internet. Nowadays it’s easier than before to publish and make a few get paid for it thanks to platforms like Royal Road, Substack, and Patreon. This method usually requires fast turnaround (writing and editing) for new chapters but can allow for a very intimate relationship with your audience.

Self Publishing (aka. Self-pub)

You are responsible for every step of publishing including editing, cover design, interior formatting, budgets, pricing, marketing*, and potentially distribution. Now you don’t have to do everything yourself necessarily, but you will need to find and hire people who can. Many authors, myself included, like having full control over the creative process that self publishing allows. Other benefits like higher royalties and quicker time to publication make self publishing very attractive.

Typically authors use Print On Demand (POD) services to help keep the up front cost low and to not worry about distribution (as opposed to buying a single print run pallet of books that you have to ship yourself). Popular publishing platforms include Amazon KDP, Ingram Spark, Barnes & Noble Press, and Draft 2 Digital.

For our upcoming articles, we will be focusing on digging deeper into self publishing and all of its ins and outs.

*More and more, there are stories from traditionally published authors that they are forced to do most of the marketing. Trad pub houses will provide some amount of resources, but this seems to be less and less common except for the biggest name authors.

What about Indie Publishing?

Defining indie publishing largely depends who you ask. Authors tend to equate it to self publishing. But smaller presses like to group themselves under this term too.

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Willow Wraith Press is a collective of self-published authors, editors, & artists. Willow Wraith Press is not a publishing house, nor do we accept queries to publish.

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