Is self publishing my book worth it?

Jan 21

I just finished my first year of being an author. I wrote The Inside Guide during the first quarantine and published it on April 20, 2020.

Here’s what happened, what I learned about self publishing, and why I’m quitting.

The Numbers Please

Here’s the rough numbers on what it took for me to self published a 100-page non-fiction book in full color. In my opinion, this is the least amount of time you can expect to spend on the process unless you have professional writing/publishing experience.

Writing the Book: 100 hours
Getting & Integrating Feedback: 25 hours
Editing the Book: 25 hours
Laying Out Book Interior: 40 hours
Book Cover Design: 20 hours
Self Publishing Setup: 20 hours
Setting Up My Own eCommerce Sales: 20 hours
Marketing to My Mailing List: 20 hours
Marketing to Social Media: 50 hours
Virtual Book Launch on Clubhouse: 20 hours
Reprints: 10 hours
Shipping Books & Customer Service: 5 hours

TOTAL was about 355 Hours Over 1 Year

I give you these rough estimates so you can see how much time you might invest. I had previous experience doing all these tasks for the Tekserve Mac FAQ and it still took me hundreds of hours. If you don’t have experience writing, editing, laying out books, or selling stuff online, you can expect to spend double the amount of time I did.

So let’s say you can do ALL these steps without help and you don’t mind paying yourself nothing to do it.

Minimum Self Publishing Hard Costs

Most folks will also end up paying for help to edit, design, or market their book. Assuming you can do every step above yourself, here are the hard physical costs that you’ll run into getting your book published.

$49-$500 for test prints or a small print run of your book (25 copies).
$0-$250 for an ISBN (this is like your book’s serial number).
$49 (IngramSpark) to $399 (BookBaby) to list your book for print-on-demand distribution and sell through Amazon, B&N, local bookstores and so on.

Self Publishing Is Easier Than Ever But Still Sucks Ballz

100 yeas ago all book publishing was controlled through publishers because the average Jane didn’t have access to a printing press. It was the publisher’s job to make sure the book would have wide-enough appeal to pay back the massive printing costs.

Flash-forward to today, and anyone can have a book printed on-demand for $5-$25. We eliminated the risk of printing and flooded the market with new books…all at a time when adults were reading less books than ever.

A LOT of People Don’t Read Books

I thought bringing my knowledge to the printed page would have the widest reach. It turned out that even during intense quarantine, half of UK adults didn’t read a single book last year.

Average readers in the USA, spend about 15 minutes a day reading. The average American is on their smart phone for 4 hours a day and watching TV for 3 hours a day! You can see your chances of getting through are MUCH higher on a screen than on a page.

If your message can be communicated visually, video is your best bet. YouTube has become the home for anything you can explain in 3 to 30 minutes. The majority of the world uses Google to find answers and Google gives priority to relevant YouTube results–so you will be found if you’re talking about anything people are asking about.

If your message can be communicated in under 60 seconds, then you are ready for Instagram Reels & TikTok. You will do especially well in this format if you live in a beautiful place or can move to a beat.

So where does your message go if it’s not visual or it’s too complex to be broken into video episodes? DON’T START A PODCAST. You thought I was going to tell you to start a podcast didn’t you?

Read my followup on why starting a new podcast is a bad idea.

Why quitting is harder than starting…

As a creative entrepreneur, I could start a new business every week. Planning a new business is my favorite part because nothing has gone wrong yet. It’s all possibility when it’s just me and a pro forma. And if your business is mostly online, you can start that business for the cost of a SquareSpace subscription.

This has created a world where most hustlers have 5 different hustles at once. I will out myself as one of those people who loves to be running multiple projects at once. What I’m learning is that it’s great to be interested in 5 different paths but it’s complicated to make money from all 5.

Living in late-stage capitalism taught me that I needed to monetize everything I enjoyed. I was wrong. Enjoy what you enjoy. Monetize what you have an unfair advantage doing at the perfect time.

Letting Go of the Wrong Projects Makes Space for the Right Fits

There’s a cliché that God will never hand you more than you can handle, and it applies to entrepreneurship too. If you are already at full capacity between your business, your side business, your family, and your life–there’s no space for anything to be created. You need to let go of something before you’ll attract a better fit.

Here’s some random guidelines I use for myself to keep things spacious…

Warming up my body and meditating for the day BEFORE I give my energy to a screen or another human. This sets up my day in my own energy instead of being enmeshed in whatever has come up overnight. I’ll often end my day this way too.
Centering the lifestyle I want before any business idea. If the business doesn’t support my chosen lifestyle, I skip it.
Writing something for myself before I do other work. I use my sleeping time to do subconscious processing of questions and often have answers by the time I wake up.
Declining most of the requests for my time/energy/attention for free. I still accept most of the requests from BIPOC humans who are starting new projects.
Keeping my social media ‘scrolling’ time to under 2 hours a week. Unfollowing people who love drama.
Noticing when I’m in “expansion-mode” and should be out meeting new people and noticing when I’m in “focus-mode” and should be working on my work. Business requires a combination of extraversion and introversion and it’s easy to spend too much time on the side you prefer.
Giving far fewer fucks what others think or say about me.

How do you keep your life spacious? Let me know in the comments.