Self-publishing vs Traditional Publishing

The famous-name authors operate in a different world to that of self-publishing. As a self-publisher, you receive no retainers, advances, deadlines, or a huge team covering every aspect surrounding the book including marketing and printing thousands of copies.

Self-publishing means you're publishing your own book. You are responsible for it all.
"Self-publishing provides more freedom and control, but it also provides more risk. Traditional Publishing provides more credibility and promotion, but your vision can also get lost in the bureaucratic machinery of the business. It's a tough decision to make." ~Mark Manson

On the other hand, you know that to get published by a large publishing house, you have to first find an agent that likes your book and thinks it worthwhile to present the book to a Publisher, who will then read it and decide whether they like it enough to want to market it for you. So, the decision to self-publish may be easier. But you carry the cost, have to do all the marketing yourself, and you have no guarantee that you will become a famous author.

Although self-publishing means you're publishing your own book, it also means you have to ensure your manuscript is ready in the correct format that is acceptable to Print-on-Demand (POD) services such as Amazon and IngramSpark and for local printers. (We have found that due to the difference in paper used for local NZ printers, we need to adjust the spine width as it differs from POD services.)

Many people know how to type their story into a word processor, such as Microsoft's Word or LibreOffice, but to actually get the whole project ready, with headers, footers and page numbers, Tables of Contents Pages, margins and and high-res images to a high-quality standard, may be above your expertise level.

Cover design and final publishing is critical to the process.

Publishing with Wordwyze

If all this sounds daunting, this is where WordWyze can help you bring your work all the way through to full publication, where it is then either printed, or made available on POD (Print On Demand) sites, like Amazon and IngramSpark.
We've done the head-bashing and research and know how it all works.
So, for a reasonable fee, we can get your manuscript ready for publishing, and looking professional.
Read through the Interior Design & Formatting and Cover Design pages.

Publishing involves the following:

• Preparing the book for soft or hardcover printing.
• If you're in NZ, we have a good relationship with local Printers and will obtain a quote for printing physical books, locally.
• Uploading to Ingram Spark (IS)/Amazon for International Distribution.
• Load meta-data and check and approve files.
• Creating an account for you on either platform as agreed, if necessary.
• Adjusting cover spine width and preparing documents to IS/Printers specs.
• Managing the process and providing ongoing advice (emails and phone calls).
  Appraising the book and organising the legal requirements (ISBN, Legal Deposit, Public Lending Right, Nielsen BookData, etc).

Note: There is a separate fee that is charged by Ingram Spark for Title upload (currently US$49 for both paperback and ebook or US$25 for ebook only), which will be charged directly to you, once the account has been set up, and the files uploaded. From there onwards, you will receive 100% of the royalties direct for any sales through them.

There is also an additional fee to be listed in their advance catalogues.
The advantage of Ingram Spark is that it provides a far wider international distribution than just using Amazon. If you go with IS, your book will also automatically be listed on Amazon, amongst various other well-known online bookstores.

We can also convert your final manuscript into an ePub format for eBooks.
This is quite labour-intensive, and therefore this incurs an added fee, but in today's world, many readers prefer eBooks which won't get torn, bent or get moldy, and with an E-reader, they can carry around a thousand books on one device!