The Pluses and Minuses of Self-Publishing Academic Books
Earlier I shared the pros and cons of traditional publishing for serious nonfiction. For this post I will follow the same structure, but this time I will focus on self-publishing.
Self-publishing isn’t anything new, and it isn’t even the product of the internet. Mark Twain, the beloved novelist and memoirist who gave us Tom Sawyer and Life on the Mississippi, eventually grew tired of making his publishers piles of money and began self-publishing his books. But, from what I gather, he was worse at managing his self-publishing than he was at managing his personal budget.
In academe, there are plenty of outlets for publishing scholarly monographs. But I’ve never met a scholar who depends on their books for income. Of my six traditionally published books, I’ve made a total of maybe $5,000 spread out over ten years, which I’m sure works out to around a few cents per hour of writing. Of course, that’s not why I write. But I could make a lot more money for less work if I used that extra writing time to teach overload classes or put on paid workshops.
Still, it is attractive to think of what might happen if one of my nonfiction books took off and sold millions. I’ve wondered, for example, what it might be like to be Benjamin Hoff. Hoff wrote a pair of books about Taoism, which he described using entertaining stories featuring the characters from Winnie the Pooh. I read the pair in an Eastern Philosophy course while in college. The books were on the NYT bestseller list for weeks and weeks, but Hoff’s story is anything but glamorous. In this incisive essay,
Hoff shares his tale of humiliation, disappointment, and frustration working with publishers on his extremely successful books.
For me, Hoff’s essay was a powerful argument against traditional publishing, even though I’ve never sold close to as many books as he has.
Where I’m Coming From
I’ve self-published two books already, and I have two more that will be released later this year. I have already earned tenure and the rank of professor, which means that I’m not really under any pressure to build out my professional resume. I also have five books from reputable academic publishers, which is already quite a few. So I don’t see a big value in a seventh or a tenth.
Pluses of Self-Publishing Academic Books
1. Control over the schedule. When self-publishing, I can plan exactly when to work on and when to release my books. With traditional publishers, I spend a lot of time waiting on them—sometimes a full year between submission and review/feedback. By then, I found I’ve lost interest in the book and have moved onto something else, which makes it hard to interpret or address feedback.
2. Greater control over the finished product. This is a plus for me, but it may be minus for you. I like cover-design, copy-editing, and other parts of the book writing process that aren’t writing-specific. In particular, I like designing exactly what I had imagined for my book—right down to the thickness of its pages. All of these decisions are outsourced or standardized with traditional presses. Peruse the stock images at Getty or elsewhere for long enough and you’ll find the cover of every book on your shelf.
3. Control over price. Beginning with my first book, I have negotiated with publishers to offer my book at an affordable rate. Even when they comply, “affordable” means less than $50. That’s not exactly something I’m comfortable buying in bulk for colleagues and friends, even at a 50% discount. I can order a whole case of my self-published books without cracking $100. I’m much more generous with them.
4. Freedom to do something different. Self-publishing a book allows me to decide its focus and aim, its audience, its structure, the number of citations, and so on. Acquisitions editors are (rightfully) thinking about who they can sell the book to, and so they have a few buckets in mind that they can drop your book into. But fitting into each bucket will require changes here and there—some of them significant. I’m not always willing or interested in making these changes, and have wound up with books that would otherwise have gone nowhere.
5. If they sell well, then I’ll make more money. I’ve had books sell several hundred copies without yielding any royalties. Part of this is because the publisher has to pay for copy editing, glossary writing, and other steps of the process, and these are paid out of royalties. But once royalties do come in, they are a rather small percentage. If I sell several hundred copies of a self-published books, then I’ll make several thousand dollars.
Minuses of Self-Publishing Academic Books
1. (Probably) Doesn’t count towards tenure or promotion. I’m not even sure if this is true, but I take it to be true. Because self-published books have not received the validation of a peer-reviewed book contract, I don’t count them among the scholarly books I’ve published, and I didn’t include them in my promotion or tenure portfolios. If tenure/promotion is on your horizon, then I do not recommend self-publishing a book (unless you already have several traditionally published books). As a corollary, I wouldn’t count my self-published books as scholarly contributions, even though they might be useful and valuable for their readers. It’s the same reason I don’t consider this blog as a scholarly contribution, however useful it might be. That being said, media is always changing. I trust that a reputable YouTube channel could be used today as evidence of a scholar’s impact in their field. Perhaps self-published books will be better than nothing.
2. Author has to do extra work beyond writing. I remember having to copy-edit my dissertation before sending it off to be bound. It took me just about as long to edit to printer specifications as it took to write, and it was 400 pages! Copy-editing, cover design, formatting, pagination, and all that stuff is typically covered for a fee (taken from your royalties) by a traditional publisher. Or in some cases it’s skipped (publishers are not exempt from printing poorly edited books). If you want to publish a good-looking and well-constructed book, then you’ll have to spend many hours learning how to do these steps. I’ve come to enjoy it, because there is an art to it.
3. Peer review isn’t built in. When you submit a proposal to an academic publisher, they will solicit reviews on your behalf. Sometimes they will even pay reviewers. I think peer review is valuable, so this is a nice perk. If you want peer review for your book, then you will have to organize this yourself. If you wanted to be blinded, then you’ll have to find someone who can serve as intermediary. (You could also write an article-length version and submit it for review at a journal, publication of which will help strengthen the social validity of your book and get you some feedback.)
4. Low likelihood of being adopted as a course or workshop resource. I think it would be unlikely for a university to choose a self-published book for use in a workshop. My reasoning is that these requisitions must be reviewed by grantors (maybe) or academic affairs or anybody who will be signing the checks.
Honestly, I think that’s about it.
To summarize, I think that self-publishing is a clear winner if you…
· Already have plenty of publications and/or have alreardy obtained tenure
· Enjoy the book creation process as much as writing
· Want more freedom, flexibility, and control over the books you write
· Have trouble with the glacial pace of publisher production schedules
Comments
Post a Comment