Why should you self publish?

So far we've covered building your author platform and your brand, all the different elements you could include to reach a worldwide audience and how to get the best out of the tools available to you. We've also looked at how to be a better novelist - writing a great book to launch - and the publishing journey today and how it's changed to being mostly virtual.

Today I'm going to give you ten reasons why you should consider publishing your own books. This kicks off my new blog series "Self Publishing". Over the coming weeks and months, we're going to look at self publishing in depth and I'll have case studies, debates and useful advice to help you make an informed decision about this type of publishing. Five years ago, this would have been frowned upon - "vanity, vanity" - but not any more. In fact, if you dream about an amazing publishing deal with a traditional publishing house, self publishing your book first and drumming up sales into the thousands could prove incredibly resourceful.

Why self publish?

1) You can publish a book freely without the depressing submission and rejection merry-go-round.

2) Online marketing tools give you instant access to a worldwide marketplace.

3) There's the potential to earn a lot of money.

4) There's the potential to fulfill your writing ambitions.

5) Respectable authors are doing it.

6) Cuts out lots of middle men who all want a cut - agents / publishers / distribution channels.

7) Yes, marketing is hard work but you are in control of the experiments.

8) Technology and social media is there to be exploited - and most of it is FREE.

9) Any contracts with Amazon / Lulu / Smashwords are for as long as you want and there's no pressure to earn back the advance that you would normally get with a traditional pub. house.

10) If you're dedicated and you hang in there with marketing, you'll earn more over time (higher percentage of royalties on a like for like digital rights contract) than you would with a traditional.

We'll go into each of these points in a lot more detail as the series progresses.