If you can publish a book yourself, what does JewishSelfPublishing have to offer?

For some people, self-publishing is synonymous with a do-it-yourself (DIY) approach. In other words, just like handymen can go to the hardware store to buy tools and supplies to work on their homes and amateur mechanics can go to the parts store for what they need to fix their cars, authors can go to websites like CreateSpace to publish their books all by themselves.

This approach is perfect for those who have plenty of time, energy, and resources. You can do a great job publishing your book while saving money and enjoying yourself if you’re ready to take on the challenge of a new experience, learn new skills, and manage a project all by yourself.

But not all of us have the time, energy and skills to succeed as self-publishers. Many who try to do it all alone end up with a book that’s less than ideal.

DIY or Do It Right?

What do you do when your car breaks down—bring it to a mechanic or fix it yourself? When your home needs to be repainted, do you do it yourself or hire a painter? When it comes to important projects, we’ve all got strengths and weaknesses, and nobody is skilled enough to DIY everything. I myself have done a number of repair jobs in my house; half of the time I am very proud of my accomplishments, but the other half of the time I end up paying a lot of money to hire a professional to fix what I damaged.

Self-publishing is no different. Although you might be very literate and familiar with books, you might not be ready for the challenge of publishing one on your own.

We can lack the objectivity to edit our work, even if we got As in English grammar and literature (which a lot of us didn’t). Laying out the interior in Microsoft Word is not as easy as it seems (I will devote a future blog post to this topic). Many self-publishing companies, like CreateSpace, offer free cover-creating tools, but they are very limited and often don’t produce the best results.

How Can a Publisher Help?

Publishers work on a more strategic level. He or she will create a plan for how to develop the manuscript into a book that will attract and satisfy the target audience. Then, the book must be distributed and marketed to reach that audience. Publishers are trained and experienced in these tasks, used to thinking in the broad strokes of publishing trends and tools. On his or her first attempt at publishing, a new self-publishing author is likely to have a lot of catching up to do. Learning as you go can be fun (or frustrating), but it rarely leads to expertly executed projects. This is one reason that self-publishing has become synonymous with inferior publishing.

DIY with Support

There is a way for authors to self-publish with the confidence of professionals. A self-publisher can hire freelancers to edit their manuscript, lay out the text, design the cover, order printing, and market the title. But this solution is fraught with danger for authors who don’t have the experience to know where to turn to for all of these jobs. There’s the risk of being overcharged by unscrupulous freelancers taking advantage of a new self-publisher’s ignorance in the publishing world, too.

This is where JewishSelfPublishing comes in. Working with us, an author has full rein to guide and develop the publication of his or her manuscript. We lend a thoughtful ear and devise a master plan for publishing a book that achieves the goals the author sets out. We can suggest the right freelancers to do the various jobs that are required. As a team, we work together to ensure that the author’s dreams come true.

In Who Knows 9?, I defined self-publishing like this: “It means that you, the author, are the publisher. You have complete creative and legal control. Creatively, you can make all of the decisions regarding your manuscript. No one can tell you what title to give it, how to edit it, or what the cover should look like. Legally, you own the content. Your book is your baby to nurture exactly as you desire.”

JewishSelfPublishing offers three levels of services—we call them basic service, premium service, and customer service—so, you, the self-publisher, can get the help that fits your budget and needs.

But, as I will discuss in the next post, we offer a lot more, too.