Sometimes self-publishing is the only option for people who can’t find a traditional publisher. The problems occur when they skip steps. Authors shouldn’t publish without copyediting. Ever. It’s also in their interest to have a professional editorial analysis done before copyediting to see if there are serious problems that a copyedit won’t fix.

Authors also shouldn’t attempt to lay out their own books and design their own covers unless they have enough design experience that they can pick up the specifics of book design.

Publishing services companies can consolidate all this stuff so you don’t have to run around securing every service individually. You may be able to do this more cheaply on your own, so it’s a question of whether you’d rather deal with the inconvenience or the extra cost.

What we will NOT do is get your book into brick and mortar stores, or get your book reviewed.

Bottom line, self-publishing can be a great option for some, but do the homework to figure out what you need and what it will entail.

Jay’s timelines concern book-length commercial fiction. His experiences do not represent the publishing cycle — for either authors or publishers — in the 80%+ of the publishing industry that is not book-length commercial fiction.

That “80%+” holds whether one measures by titles released, by face value, by copies sold, by compensation paid to authors, by shelf-inches devoted in general bookstores, by sales rankings at Amazon… indeed, by any numeric measure of which I am aware, and my “day job” involves being directly and immediately aware of what’s going on in publishing.* I would certainly quibble with some aspects of Jay’s timeline; for example, it makes a big difference at the publisher’s end whether this is a first/standalone book or in a series for things like art sourcing, design, the marketing cycle, etc. That said, it’s far, far more useful and accurate than you’ll see in any of the periodicals aimed at writers!

* Which, one might add, is the bastard offspring of a three-century-long orgy among thirteen distinct and incompatible business models beginning in the early eighteenth century. You may now scratch your eyes out and reflect that there are some things you just can’t unsee… like the thought of an orgy involving both Bennett Cerf and Judith Regan. With Tina Brown doing off-color commentary. Frankly, I’d rather have dreams about Greg Van Eekhout playing strip Gorillas and Lions.

It’s not just that the services of the copy-editors, etc. cost money, and that good ones are hard to find. If you were entirely self-publish, you’d have to pay for all that stuff up-front, with the risk that you might sell no companies and thereby see your book cost money rather than earning it.