I've just entered my latest book The Crimes of Dr Gramshaw into the New Generation Indie Awards 2021 for independently published books. In 2012, The Nightingale Shore Murder came joint first in its category, so fingers crossed for the same for Dr G. Always nice to have some recognition, and of course most book awards are still not open to books published outside of the traditional publishing route. Maybe this will change one day. There are certainly some bad self-published books - but there are also some bad traditionally published books, so why discriminate?
Now that I've had books published by both routes - all my nursing books were published by traditional publishing houses - I have to say that I like self-publishing better because you are in charge! You get to decide on the cover, the book size and paper, the illustrations, the font, and of course the content - and you can publish much more quickly than by the traditional route, which is a real bonus.
Of course that means that the onus is on you to get everything right - facts, permissions, spelling, grammar, continuity, etc etc. And you have to take the blame when somebody spots an error or doesn't like the story or whatever. But on the whole I'd rather be responsible for it myself and in charge of the whole publishing project. And with a good independent publisher, you still get lots of help, advice and encouragement from the team of experts at the publishers. I use Matador publishing and the team there are fantastic. I'd really recommend them to anyone wanting to publish their work independently. They have all sorts of accreditations and affiliations which you can see on their website - they are for people 'serious about self-publishing'...
