Just like any other industry, there are things people believe about self-publishing that aren’t really the case at all. Misconceptions are common, and they are sometimes held by self-publishers and would-be self-publishers themselves as well as readers. In the spirit of dispelling a few myths, read on for some of the most common myths about self-publishing.

Success can happen overnight

Sometimes it might seem as though an author has come out of nowhere to have a huge hit with a novel, but in reality, there isn’t really such a thing as an overnight success. Even if a self-published writer manages to hit the top of the bestseller list with their first novel, there will have been a huge amount of work beforehand. They will have spent months – if not years – writing their novel, and then more time perfecting it ready for publication.

There’s a joke about an overnight success that actually took ten years, and there’s more truth in this than there can sometimes seem.

It’s really easy

Some people – readers and writers – think that self-publishing is the easy way of doing things. It’s not. For one thing, writing a book is never easy. Publishing a book is also not quite as straightforward as simply uploading a document to Amazon, sitting back and waiting for the rewards.

It’s really hard

The other side of the “it’s really easy” coin are those who think that self-publishing is really hard. This can sometimes be the impression new writers have when they first start investigating self-publishing and come to realise it’s about more than writing a book and having a pretty cover. It isn’t always easy, but nor is it outrageously difficult. Many of the skills authors need for self-publishing they already have, and the ones they don’t can always be bought in if necessary.

Authors only self-publish because they couldn’t get a book deal

This has to be probably the most annoying self-publishing misconception. Some authors do self-publish because they were turned down by traditional publishers, but that doesn’t mean that their book is bad. It often just means that the publishers couldn’t see how the book would fit into their business and so decided not to take the risk.

Authors self-publish for lots of reasons. Some do it because their work is within a very specific niche, while others do it because they want the control and flexibility that the self-publishing model brings. What authors need to do now is make self-publishing recognised for the high quality work that so many of them are producing. It’s not all about having a traditional book deal anymore; self-publishing is now a valid, desirable option that should be a natural choice for all sorts of authors.