There are a lot of authors out there who are interested in Penguin Publishing. Learn more about self-publishing and whether or not Penguin Publishing is worth it.
Today's article has three answers to the key question that came in. And you're going to want to stick around for the third answer. Because it's a secret as to the one thing you don't want to miss when it comes to whether or not to publish with Penguin Publishing.
The question that was sent in today was, is Penguin Publishing worth it? This is a fantastic question because when you're first getting started with publishing, you have 2 different ways that you can go to.
You can decide to publish just simply based upon doing it yourself. You can try to get traditionally published with a major publishing house if you have an agent. They will help fix your book.
Then you will submit it in and then you will get rejected back and forth until perhaps you eventually get accepted. Or you can go for a route where we're hiring a publishing company that will do a lot of the work for you. You will save time from having to learn all of the steps.
Then, we'll put that book onto the market. Whether we call it a vanity publisher or a hybrid where you're self-publishing a part of it, doing a little bit of it yourself. But then also using them to get the book out onto the market, on to the different platforms that you're going to want to see it.
The problem here is that we don't want to end up in a situation where we're feeling terrible. Because we've wasted so much money with one or the other publishers. The other fear is we're going to lose control of our book, leaving us feeling terrible.
Check out this related article: How Much Does It Cost To Write And Publish A Book?
The final one is a sensation of knowing that you put the book on the market but then it's not selling at all. So it's just sort of an embarrassment that it's even out there. These are all of the fears that can be associated when we're trying to go with a publishing house.
That is why we want to explore today, is Penguin Publishing worth it? But before we get into the answers, check out my absolutely free Self-Publishing Checklist. It will help you get started with self-publishing right away.
Let me tell you a little bit about my own story. When I first got started publishing, I wanted to get a book on the market. I was kind of wondering, what options do I have when it comes to getting this book on the market?
I had heard about different publishing houses that would do it all for you. Where you could just simply send them your manuscript. They could even help motivate you even do that I suppose.
But you'd at least send them a manuscript, then they could do the editing. They could do the formatting and the covers. They could put the whole thing together.
They could create all sorts of marketing packages for you for thousands and thousands of dollars. You would be able to get your book onto the market. The idea then would be that you could focus on the writing and then they would do the rest of it for you.
So that was one of the options I was definitely considering and thinking. But what would be the risks? The thing is that in many of these cases, the company that you would send it to would own the rights to the book.
A Terrible Option
The sales would go to them. Then they would give you a small portion of the profits and royalties that would come off of those books. That was a really big problem for a lot of people because they didn't want somebody else to own the rights.
Once they had already gotten paid for all of the books. They were of no interest in talking with you afterward about fixing your book. If there were mistakes in it or maybe you wanted to do the marketing for your book.
They're taking such a big share of the sales. They already charged you so much just to get the book onto the market. And so many of the podcasts and books that I was reading at the time we're saying this is a terrible option.
You should completely stay away from one of these companies. Because you need to own the rights to your books. You don't want to end up in that situation where you're feeling miserable. Because somebody else owns the rights to all of the hard work that you've made.
So that was something we wanted to avoid. For me, I decided not to go that route with hiring another company, I decided to do it myself to figure out the steps that were involved. To try to break them down into something simple.
Initially, I felt the overload of exactly what it feels like when you have too many steps and too much stuff going around in your head. And you're never going to get this book published, that's where most authors are.
Check out this related article: What Are The Best Tips For Self Publishing A Book?
You write your first book then you want to get it out onto the market. But you're not able to hold the focus and learn the skills necessary. I almost reached that point where I was ready to give up until I discovered that it doesn't have to be so hard to publish your book.
That's one of the reasons I created this very blog and my Youtube channel as well. I've been very happy with 185 books I've published since that point.
But let's get into the answers regarding Penguin Publishing. The first is Penguin Books in the USA which is underneath the Penguin Books that has started in the 1930s, they realized that they were losing a lot of money.
Amazon was outmaneuvering them and producing a lot of books on the market from self-publishers. So they jumped into the market and said for $90 to $545 they would help you get your book published. The difference in prices would be based upon how much help you were going to need.
To ensure that your book was of high enough quality and that you had things done. If you didn't want to do anything other than writing the book, you could do that. They would help you get your book onto the market.
Now, the thing is that a lot of self-publishers don't realize that just because you have a Penguin as the publishing house behind the book, that doesn't mean you're going to make extra sales.
Best Route To Go
The average reader doesn't care who published the book that they are reading. They just care that the book is good and high-quality. They're going to use the reviews, they're going to search for this book and use several different tricks to figure out whether this book is the right book for them.
They don't go to the first page and say "Oh I see it was Penguin". Or one of the other major publishing houses, they don't care about the fact that it says Penguin. You can think that because you care that your readers are going to care and they won't.
But I would just say that there's nothing wrong with Penguin Publishing. This is a good route to go if you don't have the time and you're not going to do it yourself.
The secret answer of the day is that you don't need to pay the extra money. You can do everything yourself. It's not very difficult, you can follow some of the simple steps that I cover in this article.
How you're going to break it down into the phases of the project? We're going to learn a few small tools as I use. For example, for formatting, I use a tool called Jutoh to ensure the format is perfect.
It will work as we distribute the book through all of the different channels that we need to do for the book. When we want to make sure we get our maximum number of sales and that the book is going to come out of high-quality many times better than some of these companies that will try to help you do your book.
Check out this related article: Can Self Published Books Be Successful?
So my opinion on this one after 185 books is that you should learn the skills yourself. Then if you find it too much of a pain, you can outsource it to other people. Do what I am doing which is I use virtual assistants to help me push the books together once I've got the books written or produced.
Then we can get it onto the market as quickly as possible. We can start earning money on that book and we don't want to spend more money than we have to. So, the final opinion on my side is that you need to learn to do it yourself if you have the time to do it.
But if you've got the money and you simply do not want to invest the time or you don't have the skills necessary to learn these simple computer programs, the order of creating it and going a little bit at a time, then I definitely would say Penguin Publishing is worth considering.
I would recommend Penguin Publishing for anybody who just simply doesn't have time or maybe you don't feel you have the skill set. But you can be surprised at what exactly you do have if you just give it a go.
What have you found? Have you tried Penguin Publishing? If you have, write "Yes" as a reply, and if you have not tried them write "No". I really want to know if this is something useful to you.
Tell me how does it feel if you have tried Penguin Publishing. I would really love to hear it. And check out my other blogs and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.