Hi, Oh dear God no! Just saw this and like the others the answer is no. I don't know the company you mentioned. But the basic rule is never use a self publishing company. If you go indie, do it yourself. And if you go trade, it costs nothing to get an agent. The first rule of being an author is that all monies flow to you. You don't pay a single cent to anyone to publish your book. Agents and publishers take their cut from sales. If you go idie then yes you will have to hand over monies, mostly for cover design and editing, but you choose the people you use. You may also do some marketing - but again it's your deision. Self publishing companies by and large are taking your money to do what you can do for yourself and usually not providing anything in return. And while you're at it, you might want to google the term "author mill". Cheers, Greg.
So how do you go about deciding if it's better to go the indie route or go through an agent? Would you try querying first and then if you get no results, move on to indie?
I would try querying first and if I got no results, I'd try very hard, through all the avenues I could think of, to find out if the problem is that the manuscript needs more work.
Hi, That's something that every author needs to decide for themselves. For some people self publishing right out of the gate is the way to go. Maybe they write in a genre they don't think is commercial. Maybe that want the complete creative control an indie has and a trade published author will never have. For others indie will never be a choice, simply because they do not feel confident in their skills to do everything else an indie must do like marketing, editing, cover design etc. Be in no doubt the road to doing indie publishing well comes with a massively steep learning curve. And of course for those wanting to go trade the biggest hurdle is that as Hugh Howie says, you can never actually choose to go trade. You can choose to try, whereas you can actually self publish. My advice for those approaching this point in their writing careers is to work out what they value as a writer. What form of success they want. Read loads and loads of writerly blogs about other writers' journeys in both worlds. Work out what is possible for you. And then add in one additional clause in your decision making tree. If you do decide an agent / publisher is right for you, set a limit. So many years spent submitting. So many rejections and non-replies. Whatever it has to be. And when you hit that magic number as unfortunately most will, bite the bullet and self publish. The worst thing any author can ever do is get into a life time rut of submitting and submitting and submitting. That way lies despair and failure. Yeah self publishing may not be a wonderful experience. You may feel like a failure doing it. And you may find yourself wading through rivers of brown smelly stuff in terms ofpoor sales and harsh reviews. No one ever guaranteed that self-publishing was a picnic. But at the end of the day a writer's journey has to include publishing. It has to involve putting your work out there for others to read and comment on. It's only that way that a writer becomes an author and truly improves him or herself as such. And in the end you can sit there with your book in your hands and know that you've done it. Cheers, Greg.
