Last week I talked about the pros and cons of going after a traditional publishing contract, and at the end I freely admitted that I am strongly in favour of Indie. Today, I’ll tell you why, and let me start with the cons.

Cons

• You have to do all the work yourself — not only writing the book, but also the design and production, and the marketing.
• There used to be a prejudice against self-published books, but that has all but disappeared. With all the well known authors who are choosing this route now, or a combination of traditional and Indie, I believe it will soon disappear altogether.
• That’s all.

Pros

• There’s no intermediary between you and publication of your book. You can put your book up for sale on Amazon, Apple Books, Kobo and all the other platforms by yourself. 
• When the book is ready, you can publish it right away and it will be available for sale within hours.
• You have complete control over how the book looks, what it’s called and what you write in it.
• Instead of the 10% royalties of traditional publishers, you will get either 35% or 70%, depending on the selling price of your book. On Amazon, for example, if your book sells for between $0.99 and $1.99, you’ll get 35%. If the price is from $2.99 to $9.99, that rate goes up to 70%. 
• Short print runs are easy and inexpensive now, so you can order small quantities if you want to sell them at events or give them away to potential clients. 

So as you can see, the pros greatly outweigh the cons for Indie publishing. That’s why even many traditionally published authors are dipping their toes in the Indie waters. Yes, you have to do everything yourself and there is a bit of a learning curve, but there’s a wealth of information on the Internet about how to do that. 

Do the math — the ROI alone justifies taking the Indie route.