The self-publishing industry in India has boomed dramatically! Even in the period of prolonged and subsequently relaxed lockdown, the money-making domain of the self-publishing industry has not come down any bit except for a few breakers that were easily crossed. The owners of the company are making huge money out of the pockets of aspiring authors who do not understand even the abcd of the publishing industry, politics and the bitter truth that it is only a rare occasion that any self-published author can make a profit by selling paperback or hardcover copies! And that’s why I am suggesting, publish your book on Amazon Kindle – free of cost – spend some money on ensuring it reaches the right readers and you can make money which directly goes into your account!
The biggest and the worst disadvantage with getting your book self-published by some notorious self-publishing company is getting yourself limited to very mediocre services, low-level or no editing, overpriced final product and no marketing scope by the publishers. On the other hand, if you publish on Amazon Kindle by yourself, you can spend a considerable amount on getting your script edited, a minimum amount on formating the kindle copy and getting a good book cover. You can spend a little on marketing the book as well. All these, let me assure you, will cost you about 15,000 or 20-25 thousand depending upon the marketing you do. However, the biggest advantage with Kindle publishing is that you get to decide the price of the book, you directly access the Amazon dashboard and monitor your sales, trigger your promotions and get about 60% of royalty on your book sales if you set the price 99 or above. Isn’t that great?
Yes, self-publishing company do not let you access your author dashboard on Amazon directly! They make some mediocre looking data-fed page on their website and name it your author dashboard to fool you about the sales numbers. I have talked to about 150 self-published authors who have published their debut books with some self-publishing companies and they never could see the shore… the publishing companies charged them about 40,000 rs on average, 1,50,000 maximum and 25,000 minimum. None of them, however, could make even 5,000 by sales because they had to spend extra money on marketing on their own. Those who got their books marketed by their publishers only spent an amount between 20,000 to 2,00,000 rs extra and this, unfortunately, also could not bring them any better luck!
There are many publishing consultants and book promotion companies who also focus on getting a book independent published and everything else should be dealt with by the author himself or herself. It will give the author the right authority – will to decide the book price, right marketing campaigns and also monitor the sales directly so that there is no scope for bad-numbering. So, what are you going to do when you publish your first book? I have left the option to talk to the authors of the second book because they very well understand how these self-publishing companies loot money from newcomers and leave them stranded!
By Ashish for Literature News
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