Choosing to self-publish my book was a no-brainer.  Why?  Because I’m incredibly impatient.

That’s not to say I wanted my work out there as soon as I was done with it.  Of course I want it to be the best it can be, but that is why I got people who I knew would be able to edit the book better than I could to help out and held a cover design poll.  I was ready to get my work out there instead of waiting to hear back from publishers (since that can take months).

That’s not to say I wouldn’t like to have a traditional publisher someday, I just knew that this wasn’t the time for that.

There were other reasons why I went with self-publishing, of course.  One of them was total creative control.  Now, I’m not too informed on how tradtional publishing works in this sense, but from what I gather, you kind of have to give up some rights to how you want your book to be designed and (possibly) how the book is edited.  I wasn’t willing to give up any control over this; it’s my baby.  I wanted it to stay that way and keep all the aspects of the book to be my decisions.

That said, I can say that this book is all me.  Yes, I had incredible editors whom I will trust with my future work, but that was mainly fixing any mistakes I missed or wording something in a way that made more sense.  Content is all me.  Characters are all me.  And, because I didn’t hire a designer, the decision for the cover was all me.  I chose what stock photo to use and got the rights for it and subsequently placed the title, name, and description on it.   I know without my contributors this would not have been possible, and I thank them so much for helping me out.

But the main point I’m making is that the creative control was all mine.  Not someone else’s.

Again, I’m not opposed to working with traditional publishers in the future.  In fact, I’d really love to be a traditionally published author someday.  But I think to get my feet wet in this path, going with the self-publishing route was the best way for me to do it.  I learned a lot more than I ever would have about the publishing process this way and I have absolutely no regrets about it.