Podcast: Navigating Independent Publishing: DIY, Assisted, and Hybrid Options with Patricia Marshall
hosted by Sue Campbell
In this episode of the Write Anyway podcast, host Sue Campbell chats with Patricia Marshall, founder and CEO of Luminare Press, about the different approaches to self-publishing: DIY publishing, assisted publishing, and hybrid publishing.
Learn the pros and cons of each method, and get insights into costs, processes, and what kind of authors and goals each approach is best suited for. Whether you're looking to keep full control and manage all aspects yourself, or prefer to hand over parts or all of the process to professionals, this episode aims to guide writers in making informed decisions about turning their manuscripts into market-ready books.
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transcript
Anne Hawley: Are you a writer thinking of self-publishing? Unclear what hybrid publishing is? Mystified by the whole business of turning your manuscript into a real book in the real marketplace? Then this one's for you.
Hello and welcome to the Write Anyway podcast from Pages and Platforms and the Happily Ever Author Club.
In today's episode, Sue talks with the founder and CEO of Luminare Press about all the pros and cons of three non-traditional publishing options: DIY publishing, assisted publishing, and hybrid publishing. Let's listen in.
Sue Campbell: Patricia, welcome. I'm so excited to talk to you today about independent publishing options.
Patricia Marshall: Thank you for having me, Sue. This is a great opportunity to talk with you. I always enjoy our conversations.
Sue Campbell: Same here. And I think we're gonna help a lot of writers today understand independent publishing options. Today we're gonna talk about various ways that you can quote unquote self-publish. If you're considering traditional publishing and self-publishing and you haven't made a decision yet, this will help you decide like what's inside the box when I even consider independent publishing, and Patricia and I aren't advocating for one over the other.
In fact, Patricia will talk about which of the independent publishing approaches might be suitable for what kind of writer and their goals. This is just to help you unpack what it would look like to independently publish and what your three basic options are. Is that about right, Patricia?
Patricia Marshall: That sounds about great. Yes.
Sue Campbell: So first, tell us a little bit, just for clarity sake, about what you do at Luminare.
Patricia Marshall: Yeah, so I am the owner and the founder of Luminare Press. We have been helping authors publish for 15 years. We are generally a self-publishing assist company, so our authors keep a hundred percent of their royalties, but we function as the group that helps them through the process of publishing.
And I'll talk a little bit about that as one option, but as Sue said, I am not here to advocate for one over the other. There are a ton of options when you self-publish. It is very confusing for people, and I hope that at the end of this you'll have a little clarity about what a good route to go for you as an author is.
Sue Campbell: Okay, great. Well, let's start with the overview of the three different approaches you can take.
Patricia Marshall: Okay, so generally I break this down into three categories. The first one is a do it yourself, DIY. The second is self-publishing assist, and the third is hybrid publishing. You have probably heard of hybrid publishing. But I don't know if you have really thought through the other two, so I can go through and sort of break those down.
What I'd like to do is sort of explain each one and then give you an idea of the pros and cons for each. And we can go a little bit into cost if we have time.
Sue Campbell: Yeah, that'd be great. Let's do it.
Patricia Marshall: Okay, let's start with do it yourself. DIY. This is what a lot of authors think of when they think about self-publishing, and the main point I wanna make today overall point is that self-publishing doesn't mean you have to do everything on your own.
A lot of authors come into this, they think, oh, well, I've gotta come up with a cover and the interior and the dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. You don't have to do that. And in fact, it's my opinion, and I would say a lot of people in the industry's opinion is that you probably shouldn't try and do everything on your own because while it is true that you can publish a book for free using KDP and Ingram Spark, you still need to have your book edited.
That costs some money. You have to have a book designer, a cover designer, interior layout, probably some marketing help. All of those things are gonna cost some money. If you are doing this on your own, you can do all those things on your own, but you have to understand that you're functioning as sort of a contractor.
So if you were building a house, you'd be hiring the plumbers and the electricians, and the flooring people, and the drywall people, the roofers, and you'd be scheduling that all on your own. That is the DIY approach. So there are tasks that have to be done to get your book published. And if you're gonna do a DIY, you're gonna find all the people to do those tasks.
So I'm going to do you a quick rundown of the tasks. Not to overwhelm you, but just to inform you. Sue will know these well. If you're, first of all, you've written a rough draft, we're gonna assume that you're gonna have someone to edit it. You need to determine what level of editing it is, and you need to find an independent editor, approve the edits and the rewrites.
You're going to need a book design, a cover, which is a front, spine, and back; an interior layout. Somebody to make an ebook for you. And if you're going in this direction you need an audiobook recording and a platform to sell that for publishing. If you're going independent, you will be purchasing your own ISBN, registering with Library of Congress, doing your copyright registration, setting up your accounts gathering and tracking your metadata, and uploading your files.
And last but not least, Sue's specialty, you will be handling a lot of the book marketing on your own.
And as I said, you can find people to do these things and find help for them, but you just need to understand that that's what you'll be doing with DIY. That's what you'll be doing with any publishing, but it's a question of how much you do on your own.
So the pros of DIY, it is not free, but it is probably the least expensive option that you will have. It can be a tremendous learning opportunity. If you are publishing more than one book, or you have a series of books, you will put a lot of time into that first book because it is a lot to learn, but then you get to use it on the next books.
So it is a great reason to do that if you have more than one book.
Also with DIY, you'll keep a hundred percent of your royalties, so you're gonna upload your files to the print on demand printers, but then all of the profits from the book are going to come directly to you.
The cons, as I've already hit on some, you are the contractor. You have to find everyone. You have to keep all the parts moving, and that's not as easy as it sounds. You know, you editor might not be free when you want them. Cover Designer might not be free. You might not get your files on time. So it really, it's a lot of parts to keep moving.
You will still pay for services with DIY. It's not a free option. And you will have to vet the quality of your providers. So you don't know if you hire somebody off Etsy-- not Etsy. Reedsy.
Sue Campbell: Right. Reedsy, R-E-E-D-S-Y, everybody. Reedsy.
Patricia Marshall: Yeah, Reedsy has a lot of contractors, but you don't really know the quality that you're getting on that.
One big con is that it's easy to make mistakes when you're publishing that you can't remedy quickly or easily. I like to say publishing is not rocket science, but you have to do it right.
There is a process to it and you don't wanna make mistakes that might be costly or that you're unable to fix.
And lastly, the con of DIY is that it will take far longer and probably cost more than you think it will.
So as if you were building a house, you have to think about those things. You know, I'm sorry, I keep bringing up the house analogy, but I just finished a huge house remodel two years ago, which took twice as long and cost twice as much as I thought, which is always kind of the thing they say about house remodeling, right?
I don't think it'll be that bad for the book, but it is something to be aware of.
Sue Campbell: I think a lot of authors, when they hear DIY, they do assume that they're going to do their best to create a cover in Canva, and they're going to do, you know, go to Vellum or another service and get their book formatted.
And I think Patricia and I are aligned with this, like if that's in your skillset, if you are a designer by day, or if you are very, very tech savvy, there are pieces of the DIY process that you can do yourself, but you can actually, you're not just the project manager, right? You're doing it yourself.
But really think through what are the parts of this where, I don't know what I don't know. I've heard you talk about book cover design and how you can spot an amateur book cover design from, you know, a, a mile away. there are some tells that, unless you're designing book covers on the regular, you're not gonna know.
So what do you tell people who are wanting to do DIY because they think they can handle everything themselves?
Patricia Marshall: Well, I, I don't mean to make light of it, but I always say like, friends, don't let friends design their book covers. And that's not necessarily true. But, you know, just because someone's a designer, it doesn't mean they are conversant with book covers just because they're an artist.
I would say you're probably if, if you are making a book that you want to have a chance on the market, I would say really, I think, Sue, that was really good.
Sit down and think about what you can and can't do. You might have great friends who are editors who can help you. You might have great friends who are book cover designers. Most people don't because that's sort of a specialty thing. But think about that. Also, look at the books in your genre. Look at what things look like. Be aware of what a good cover should look like. You don't want your cover to stand out because it's different and everybody thinks it's weird.
Sue Campbell: Yeah, agree, right? And sometimes they might not even know why it's off, but they know it's off. Okay. We can move on to the next one. Now, I just wanted to talk a little bit about that, of like, please be careful about what you choose to take on yourself. it's an investment, but you know, if you're starting your draft and you know, you wanna independently publish and you know it's gonna take you a year and a half, create a little fund for yourself where you're checking money aside a little bit at a time so that at the end of the project you have the budget to do what you wanna do and put out the kind of book you wanna put out.
Patricia Marshall: Right, right. And putting out a good book is the foundation of all your marketing efforts. So, you do have to think about marketing of course, but you also, when you get to marketing, you wanna have a book that's really great that you can market.
So talking about Self-Publishing Assist, a company that does Self-Publishing Assist is going to help you with all those tasks.
So I'm not gonna talk about that in particular, but I'm just gonna give you some pros and cons of Self-Publishing Assist. So the biggest pro is that you're gonna work with somebody who does all those tasks under one umbrella.
And again, I'm not trying to to say this is the way to do it, but if you're working with us, our team will take over. We vet all the providers, and you have the assurance that you're working with somebody who really knows the industry because we've made sure of that. And that's the other pro or one other pro is that you're only vetting one provider. It's Luminare Press, or it's a company like ours.
They will provide you with the professionals who can do the work. And if you're unhappy, you just have to talk to, to the company. If they're a good company and there are a lot out there they should definitely back that up.
The, and that, of course, the, the pro is that that'll give you a solid foundation for your marketing efforts. A professional book gives you solid foundation and you will be able to build your author platform on that.
Most self-publishing assist companies, some can offer different types of distribution, but most will work with print on demand printing and distribution.
So you may have some options on that, which could be a pro if you want to do offset printing or, or bulk printing, but most will work with POD and you will also be working on a streamlined timeline. So you don't have to figure out when the editing happens because you've turned it over to somebody else who is gonna do the project management for you.
Sue Campbell: Yeah, I, I feel like another big pro, and maybe this is already on your list, but you don't have to tackle that huge learning curve of every single piece of the process. If you're doing publishing assist, if you like that kind of thing, then DIY sounds great for you. But if you're like, I don't wanna do any of that, that sounds like a nightmare.
Then you, then you wanna look at getting some kind of help.
Patricia Marshall: You. Yes, that is absolutely true. You don't have to take on the learning curve. You will learn a lot about the publishing business in the process, and that will probably be plenty for you.
The cons of self-publishing assist. It's gonna be more expensive than DIY because you are essentially paying that contractor to do work. Some self-publishing assist companies don't offer a hundred percent royalties, so you wanna check that. You wanna make sure that that's the case. They may or may not include book launch and marketing. You know, we do some, but we hand a lot over to people like Sue to do it.
They may or may not include ongoing support. So again, we do, we talk to our authors all the time because we like them and we're people, but not everyone does that. They can just say you're done.
And the distribution, that can be a pro or a con. If you want wider distribution, if you wanna be in Target or Barnes and Noble, nationwide, self-publishing assist is probably not the way to go for you.
I'm gonna move on to hybrid, and some of you have probably heard this term, hybrid publishing. It means you are paying a company to do everything that a traditional publisher would do, including marketing, promotion, and distribution for a share of your royalties.
So hybrid is a really different type of model. The pros are sort of impressive. The company is really invested in your success because they are doing this work and getting a return on their investment too. You will have a solid team behind you to produce and market your book. Which, you know, that is not something that just is a, like an add-on or a perk.
You have the option for bulk specialty printing. It's not just limited to print on demand options, and that can mean wider distribution. And they often can have like a sales force and a catalog.
The cons to hybrid is that it's gonna be considerably more expensive. Hybrid packages are pretty high, sometimes like three or four times the amount of a DIY assist. They may have hidden add-on fees. If they are book printing, there's gonna be warehousing, marketing ,distribution. And I've read some stories about people being unhappy with hybrid because they wound up paying thousands of dollars more for warehousing.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, but if the company doesn't disclose that upfront, it is a bad thing. So you really need to, to check that.
You will not keep a hundred percent of your royalties, but if you sell more books, that that may be well worth it.
And because of the editing, the book launch and the marketing, hybrid will often take quite a bit longer than the self-publishing assist model.
Sue Campbell: I have a couple more about hybrid publishing in particular. Another one that I've heard, 'cause I talked to a lot of authors who have published a lot of different ways, and sometimes hybrid publishers, you don't have the amount of control that you would have if you were to a publishing assist.
Sometimes you have to get your book vetted. Before they will take it on, which isn't a bad thing necessarily. I kind of like the like level of gatekeeping to make sure your quality is high.
But I've had authors who had difficulty advocating for the cover that they wanted, where the, the, the publisher was just like, no, we decide on the covers. You do not. You can have a little input, but the decision is ours. Right. So you may be deciding to independently publish because you want to control all the aspects, and then you choose a hybrid publisher. And once you get in there, you realize that it's actually restrictive on your creative process.
So ask those questions ahead of time. And also be really clear about what marketing help you're getting. You may actually get more marketing help from a hybrid than you would from a traditional publisher because you are paying for it. And traditional publishers give most authors very, very little. They're giving you the distribution and basically creating the product. But they're not doing a lot in terms of marketing.
Patricia Marshall: Yes, that's absolutely true. And I do wanna point out that when you don't have that control over the cover and things, the hybrid is invested in it too. So they are gonna create the cover that they think is going to have the best chance on the market. And the pushback on that can be really difficult if you are really an author that wants control and really believes in your vision, you know, that's a tough one because I think for a hybrid that that puts them in a tough situation. If they're saying, you know, maybe this cover doesn't work or Your cover idea doesn't work, but you're really married to it.
Sue Campbell: The other thing about hybrids, again, if this doesn't bother you, no problem, but you will get slow reporting on sales just as if you had a traditional publisher. Whereas when you can get in under the hood and see KDP and Ingram Spark, you know exactly what your sales are.
When you're traditionally published or hybrid published, you have to wait for them to roll out their reports, you know, every six months if you're lucky.
Patricia Marshall: Yes. Yeah, that is very true. You know, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. I've talked to thousands of authors over the years, and I think that the decision for a lot of people is difficult, but I think there are some guidelines you might want to consider, and I think they have to do with both what type of book you're writing and what outcome you want from your book.
So a lot of authors come to me and say I wouldn't mind if it was on the New York Times bestseller list. I wouldn't mind if, if all these things happen.
But in reality, they really don't wanna put the time and effort or money into making those things happen. So I think as an author, it really pays to sit down early on the process and think, what's this gonna look like six months after I've published this book?
What do I want from it? Do I want my friends and family reviewing it? Do I want it in Barnes and Noble nationwide? Do I want to be, on podcasts? How do I see my life after the publication of this book? You know, a lot of my authors publish for friends and family. They're writing a book. They want some people to read it. They just want the book out there. It's like a bucket list thing. So if that's the case for you, DIY or self-publishing assist, are going to be a good way to go. I would not go hybrid. I would not spend the money if that was what my goal was.
I would also, and I have heard this anecdotally and I can believe it's true, that hybrid does not do well with fiction. Have you heard that Sue or.
Sue Campbell: I, I wouldn't swear to it, but I've heard like in conferences and stuff, when I'm seeing panels with people, I've heard that, yeah, hybrid is gonna be a really good option if you've got nonfiction and you've got like a business behind it and like, that's really smart.
Patricia Marshall: Because if your return on investment is what matters, and that's another thing I hear authors saying. They say, I just wanna get my money back. And even with that, you sort of have to have a plan to do that. Hybrid works really well for business, non-fiction and things that are gonna see a return on investment in something other than book sales, or something in addition to book sales, book royalties are gonna bring you some money, but it's gonna be that next client you have or that speaking gig you get, or whatever it is. If you're mission driven, maybe it's a book that you've published as part of a nonprofit or something, or you want to enlighten people about those things.
That is a really different thing from publishing a book of fiction, or a novel that you want people to read, or a memoir. I think this is true for memoirs too.
So if you're writing series fiction and you wanna make it big as an author and be known for this series, which it's probably gonna take a few books to do that, I would consider either DIY or self-publishing assist to be the way to go.
A model I really like is we do self-publishing assist and that's your package. But then when authors come back to us, we kind of say to 'em, Hey, we could just make the interior and the cover for you and save you some money for your next book, because you can learn how to set it up for publishing.
So there are things you can do if you're a series author, like you could learn it from the Self-Publishing Assist and then go DIY for the next books.
Or you could learn the whole DIY thing. Find yourself a great editor and cover designer and just do your books yourself.
I saw a really interesting thing the other day. I saw an article about hybrids that are writing people's life stories. The price tag was around a hundred thousand dollars.
Sue Campbell: Wow.
Patricia Marshall: Because these were people who older people, retired people who wanted to get their story out there. And the interesting thing about this, aside from the price, was the covers, which were terrible. I was like, so even if you're not publishing to sell, you want a nice cover, you know, you want a cover that has nice typography and is appealing and not just A photograph of your family slapped up there with some script over it. You really do wanna think about the whole book as you're thinking about how you wanna publish.
And I think the point I was trying to make with that story is that spending a fortune doesn't necessarily get the best results always.
Sue Campbell: Agree.
Patricia Marshall: So just because something costs a lot, it doesn't mean it's gonna be a great product.
Sue Campbell: Yeah, and I think it's really invaluable to talk to other authors who've worked with that publisher. Not only was the product something they were proud of, but how was the process of working with that publisher? So you can do a lot of vetting ahead of time to prevent the heartache of either having a really frustrating experience or having a product that you're not happy with.
Patricia Marshall: Right. That's a really good point, and it's very important. It's important to vet your providers and know who's working for you. One thing I didn't say, but we could do a whole discussion on this. There are a ton of scams out there too,
Sue Campbell: Yes.
Patricia Marshall: You need to avoid them. The ways people get scammed, it's like whack-a-mole.
Sue Campbell: Yeah.
Patricia Marshall: Trying to let people know what they should be on the lookout for. But there are probably more companies out there that are scammers than there are legit companies. Find somebody who's legit.
Sue Campbell: Yeah. And again, the way to do that is how long have they been in business? Do they show you the authors who they've worked with, do they allow you to talk to those authors, right? Like really do your due diligence before you cut a big check.
Patricia Marshall: Yes. And there's a few places online that review things like that. Writers Beware is one. The Alliance of Independent Authors is one, so you can, there are places you can check for that, again, that's part of your homework when you're thinking about this.
Sue Campbell: Yeah. Totally agree. Well, Patricia, thank you so much. I think this was a really helpful overview to help people understand what's involved and how they can get it all accomplished, and appreciate your time so much.
Patricia Marshall: Yeah. And if anybody has any questions, anybody can set up an appointment with me or Christine and we will walk you through things. We are not hardcore salespeople.
Sue Campbell: Absolutely. So luminarepress.com. We'll put a link in the show notes too if you wanted to talk to Patricia and see what her team could help you with. Okay, thank you, Patricia.
Patricia Marshall: Thank you, Sue. This has been very, very enjoyable. Thanks so much.
Sue Campbell: Very fun. Always.
Anne Hawley: You can learn more about Luminare Press, download a free guide to self-publishing and book a consultation with Patricia or one of her colleagues at luminarepress.com.
And if you'd like a weekly dose of writing insight and mindset and marketing tips in your inbox, subscribe to the Write Anyway Newsletter at pagesandplatforms.com/subscribe.
And that's it for this episode of the Write Anyway Podcast. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.