Getting your book published has never been easier!
What is self-publishing? Well, pretty much exactly what it sounds like: you publish your book yourself. No publishing houses, no literary agents. Just you, your book, and some elbow grease. You decide what your book will look like, feel like, read like and even how much it’ll cost. You have full creative, legal and financial control over your book. The best part? It works. Self-publishing is the fastest-growing trend in the industry for a reason. But how will using a self-publishing platform differ from publishing traditionally? Read on to get the full rundown.
What does self-publishing actually involve?
When self-publishing your book, you take on the role of publisher, editor, and marketer in addition to being the author. A sort of ‘authorpreneur’, if you will.
While it may seem like an intimidating amount of work, Bookmundo is built to automate and/or streamline most of the technical and logistical (i.e. soul-suckingly boring) aspects of the process. So if you’re curious about self-publishing but unsure whether it’s the right solution for you, we’ve got answers.
How Bookmundo makes self-publishing easy for you
Our goal is to empower writers and enable them to publish their books in an affordable and environmentally friendly way. To that end, we’ve designed Bookmundo to take on as much of the heavy lifting as possible. This lets you focus on writing, promoting, and selling your books.
How does Bookmundo help you with self-publishing?
At this point, you’re probably asking yourself how Bookmundo makes it easier for you to self-publish a book. In general terms, it:
- Lets you create and customise your book, giving you the freedom to choose everything from the size to the type of paper used.
- Features an easy-to-use cover designer that you can use to create a professional-looking book cover in no time
- Allows you to sell your book via major online bookshops like Amazon, Kobo, and Google Books from a single interface
- Enables you to set your own retail price, effectively allowing you to decide how much money you make per sold copy
- Provides detailed sales statistics, allowing you to monitor your book sales across all your selected sales channels directly in your account
- Lets you print copies of your book on demand at a discounted rate
- Provides a range of sales and marketing tools to help you spread the word and sell more books.
- Handles the printing and distribution of all purchased books
What’s left for you to do?
Our platform can do a lot of things, but we haven’t quite managed to teach it how to write a bestselling novel yet. So, we need you to:
- Write, edit, and upload your manuscript
- Create a cover using our cover designer or upload a ready-made one
- Check that everything is as you want it before publishing
- Promote and sell your book
Simply put, as long as you have the content, we can publish, print and distribute it for you, as well as ensure you get paid for the books you sell. It’s a pretty neat system that takes a whole lot off your plate. Why not give it a go? It’s 100% free to use!
Self-publishing vs. traditional publishing
If you’re still not sure what the difference between these two publishing methods is (or if you’re just on the fence about them), no worries. They’re not mutually exclusive, so it’s not like attempting one will prevent you from trying out the other.
Here’s what you can expect from each of the two publishing methods on a general level:
| Traditional Publishing | Self-publishing | |
| Influence over the design of your book | No | Yes |
| Influence over the price of your book | No | Yes |
| Editing responsibilities | No | Yes |
| Marketing responsibilities* | Yes | Yes |
| Print and edit your book at will | No | Yes |
| Influence over sales channels | No | Yes |
| Influence over royalties* | No | Yes |
| Manuscript vetting required | Yes | No |
| Literary agent required | Yes | No |
| Printing and distribution costs covered | Yes | No |
*While some publishers do arrange for some of their books to be marketed, this is a privilege usually reserved for veterans or exceptionally promising newcomers. As such, you should always prepare for having to do your own marketing, even if you’re publishing traditionally.
**You may of course be able to negotiate, but as a new author, you’ll likely be earning royalties in the 3-7% range.
Self-publishing vs. traditional publishing: round two
We like to think of traditional publishing as a sort of all-inclusive cruise, whereas self-publishing is the personalised and meticulously planned dream trip that you’ve always wanted to go on. A publishing house will take care of all the scary-sounding stuff like editing and distribution, but it will do so at your expense by keeping most of the profit from ensuing sales. You will have to give up a bunch of freedoms—both creative and financial—and that’s if you even get a foot in the door.
What do we mean by that? Well, publishing houses are notoriously risk-averse, so most of them only accept manuscripts if they’re submitted via a literary agent. Literary agents tend to work on commission, meaning they take a percentage of your profits. This of course leaves even less money for you in the end.
So, self-publishing (much like planning the whole vacation yourself) definitely requires more effort. While our publishing platform takes care of the logistics, editing, cover design, sales and marketing all fall to you. However, this grants you unparalleled control over your book. You get to decide what’s in it, what it looks like, how and when it’s going to be printed, where it’s going to be sold, how much it’s going to cost and how much money you make per sold copy.
If you like the idea of being in charge of your own book, but don’t have time to take on some of the tasks associated with self-publishing, you can just outsource them. We offer a wide range of affordable editing services on our platform, including proofreading, spell-checking, editing and cover design.
The difference between vanity publishing and self-publishing
While the two are often confused, and vanity publishers regularly pass themselves off as self-publishing companies, there is a fundamental difference. At a vanity publisher, you pay to have someone publish your book for you. Self-publishing, on the other hand, means you do it all yourself, without any compulsory costs attached.
Vanity publishers will try to maximise upfront costs
Since vanity publishers make their money by publishing your book on your behalf, they generally won’t care whether or not you actually sell any books. As such, they will often simply list your book at a wholesaler, and nothing more. Self-publishing platforms, however, are usually very invested in your success, as they rely on authors being successful to make money. A respectable self-publishing platform will therefore often provide extra sales tools and other functionalities for free to help you maximise your book sales.
Both vanity publishers and self-publishing companies may offer a range of editorial services for a fee. With vanity publishers, however, these services are often packaged with the publication itself and sold for a fee that you, again, need to pay upfront. A self-publishing platform will generally make services like these available, but completely optional.
Similarly, when printing books, vanity publishers will require you to order a certain number, often as yet another component of a package. Any serious self-publishing platform will instead allow you to print as you go, and not place any minimum requirements on print orders.
In summary, the main differences between vanity publishing and self-publishing are as follows:
- A vanity publisher will charge you money to publish your book, but legitimate a self-publishing platform will not.
- The publishing process is opaque at a vanity publisher, whereas you have full control over it when self-publishing.
- A vanity publisher will do the bare minimum to help you sell your books once they’re published; a self-publishing platform will provide you with tools to facilitate book sales.
- A vanity publisher will often sell you a package of editorial services with a publication fee tacked on, whereas any editorial services on a self-publishing platform will be optional.
- A vanity publisher will generally print a set number of books for a fixed price, whereas a self-publishing platform lets you decide when and how many books you want to print.
Essentially, vanity publishing will always be more inflexible and opaque than self-publishing. These days, it’s easier than ever to maintain full creative and financial control over your book project, so there’s no real advantage to a vanity publisher.
FAQ
How much does it cost to publish a book?
It doesn’t cost anything to publish your book on our platform. We only charge for ISBNs (if you choose to buy one) and printing books you order for yourself.
Do I need to submit my manuscript for approval before publishing?
Nope, you can simply create an account and start publishing. No approval process and no contracts; think of it as a sort of Youtube, but for books.
What makes self-publishing different from traditional publishing?
Simply put, self-publishing empowers you to take all the executive decisions regarding your book. You get to decide what’s in it, what it looks like, where it’s sold and for how much (and by extension, how much money you make per copy). Traditional publishing offers less freedom. You’ll need to submit a manuscript through a literary agent and have it approved by the publisher before you can start the publishing process.
How can Bookmundo help me self-publish?
Bookmundo streamlines and guides you through the publishing process while taking care of a bunch of technical and logistical tasks like printing, shipping, and distribution in online webshops. It also features helpful tools like manuscript templates, a cover designer, and marketing tools.
How much can I earn by selling my book?
That varies depending on the sales channel. When selling via our webshop, your own site, or social media channels, your profit margin will be at its highest. You can use our pricing calculator to figure out exactly how much you can make per sales channel. You’ll also be able to see how the profits per sold copy are distributed between yourself and the sales channels you’ve chosen.
Where can I sell my book?
Our goal is to provide a one-stop shop for all your publishing needs. To that end, all major online bookshops are available via Bookmundo, meaning all you have to do is tick a box, and your book will be made available for purchase on Amazon, Kobo, Google, and Apple Books. We also provide you with a digital storefront and social media integrations to help you sell your book directly to readers, without an intermediary; this will result in the highest possible margins for you.
What types of books can I publish?
You can publish paperbacks, hardcovers, and ebooks on our platform. The contents of those books are of course completely up to you. We also offer a wide range of other customization options, varying from the paper type to the cover finish. You can explore these options using our pricing calculator.
I don’t want to publish my book, as it’s intended for private use. Is that possible?
Absolutely! You can skip the publishing step entirely and get straight to printing or downloading.