To try for a publisher or not to try.... That is the question

This morning, as I was scrolling through my news feed on Facebook, I noticed that people were debating on whether they should or should not try to get published. There are many good points to this debate.

For one a publisher can get you a wider audience and potentially (and in all reality) increase your book sales. Second, a publisher has a marketing team on hand to do all that tedious and daunting marketing, that makes you want to rip your hair out ( well it does for me most of the time and frankly I do not have the time in the day to do the marketing 24/7). Third and most importantly a publisher has the ability to get your books into major retail stores, this is not easily accomplished if you are flying solo. I'm not saying it can't be done, but again it takes a lot of hard work and money to track down where and how to get this accomplished.

On the flip side, staying independent a person makes their own options. You have total and complete free reign on when you want to put out your next book, or if you even want to. You the author have the option to print on demand and set your own prices of your work. Most importantly you retain your freedom and your rights to your work.

It all boils down to this, what do you want out of your work? Do you want to be in the book stores and major retailers? Do you want to be able to reach a bigger audience, do you like to have the control or would you rather let someone else do all the tedious stuff and allow you time for writing?

The choice is in your hands alone. Yes submitting to publishers or literary agents, is a lot of work and you will get a lot of rejections, but you are not alone. Look up some of the more famous authors and see how many rejections they received before they landed a deal that made them famous and pulling in the big bucks... you would be surprised at what you find.