People ask me all the time, “Is it better to try to find a traditional publisher or to self-publish?”

My answer is always, “It depends.” It depends on your goals, your resources, your book idea, the marketplace. There are many factors to consider.

Nevertheless, there are several good reasons to consider self-publishing first.

1. It’s very, very difficult for a first-time author to get published these days by a legacy, or traditional, publisher.Ironically, part of the reason for this is precisely because the current technology makes it so easy to publish! There are so many books out there, the bookstore shelves are overcrowded (and that distribution mode is so flawed—but don’t get me started on that!). Publishers are more and more wary of publishing unproven authors.

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Everyone knows that if you want to be a standup comedian, you have to study a lot of standup comedy, right? Wrong. How many acts did comedian and writer Ian Coburn watch before writing and performing his first real comedy gig at eighteen? We know, we know, sounds like the intro to one of those light bulb screwing jokes! But, no, Coburn saw just one comedy act—at fifteen, on TV, while babysitting…

We don’t know if his future as a successful writer and comic was fostered by the desperate desire to avoid babysitting for the rest of his life, or if it was just one of those occupational thunderbolts from the sky, but watching that comedy act certainly must have made an impression.

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