Tim Sevenhuysen.com My obstinate antic to make the world slightly less feeble.

Self-Publishing vs. Trad Publishing

With all of the different writing I've done over roughly the last ten years, I've learned a few things about myself. One of those things is that I am pretty much built for web fiction.

There are a few reasons why self-publishing your writing online is really great. First, you have complete control over what you publish, where you put it, and how you promote it. Control is one thing I really love about web fiction. I enjoy tinkering with web design and coding, setting my own schedule for writing and publishing, and even doing marketing and promotion. With traditional publishing, whether it's for novels or short stories, the only control I can have is what I write and where I send it. For certain projects of mine, that doesn't feel like enough!

Second, self-publishing requires a little less patience than traditional publishing. Don't get me wrong; you still have to be patient when you're publishing your own work. You need to plan out your release dates to give yourself enough time to promote your work, and you have to space things out so you don't flood readers with too much all at once, and to make yourself a consistent update schedule that you'll be able to maintain. But with self-publishing, you have control over how patient you have to be. When you're trying to publish traditionally, you're subject to the scheduling of whomever you're submitting to. You may have to wait six months to hear whether a magazine or website wants to publish your story! Sites like Write 1 Sub 1 have strategies to deal with the waiting, but I still have a hard time with all the waiting.

Third, online publishing allows for instant feedback from, and interaction with, readers. As soon as you finish a story and post it, you can start seeing comments, story ratings, and tweets from readers, and if you set up a good stats-tracking system (like Google Analytics) you can see how many people are reading, too. Being able to look at the stats shouldn't be undervalued, either: maybe 1 in 100 readers will leave a comment, so if all you're doing is waiting for comments, you're probably going to be a bit disappointed with the amount of feedback you get, unless you're getting massive readership.

So in summary, I like self-publishing online because it allows me to have control, I don't have to be quite so patient, and I'm able to interact with and get feedback from readers. Traditional publishing has its own benefits, of course, but I like these ones! Your mileage may vary.