Hundreds of thousands of copies sold. Zero dollars earned. It sounds impossible, but it's a story I heard firsthand at a recent conference, and it's exactly why I'm so passionate about this episode's topic. If you're dreaming of becoming an author, the publishing path you choose for your first book can either launch your dreams or quietly crush them.

In this episode, I share why I always recommend that my clients self-publish their first book instead of signing with a hybrid or traditional publisher. I walk through the three reasons behind that advice, each backed by real stories from authors I've met and worked with, and each one a reminder of how much is at stake when you hand your book over to someone else.

This conversation is about protecting what's yours: your work, your income, and your creative vision. Whether your goal is to become a household name or simply to hand out a book that proves your expertise, knowing what you're signing up for makes all the difference.

Your book is your heart and soul on the page, so make sure you're the one holding the keys. Tune in to learn how to start your author journey on your own terms.

Keep writing, keep dreaming, and keep creating. Your book is waiting to be born!

Ready to write your authority-building book? Book a Path to Publishing Discovery Call and take the next step to moving one step closer to writing and publishing your book!

Podcast Resources

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Disclaimer: The information in this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. The content shared by the host, guests, and any affiliates is not intended to substitute for professional legal or financial advice or any professional advice specific to your situation. Always seek the advice of a qualified professional with any questions you may have.

The opinions expressed on the show by the host or guests are those of the individuals and do not necessarily reflect the views of Unicorn Publishing Company. Unicorn Publishing Company, the host, guests, and affiliates are not responsible or liable for any decisions made by listeners or actions taken hereto based on the information discussed in this podcast. By listening to this podcast, you acknowledge and agree to release Unicorn Publishing Company, the host, affiliates, and guests from any liability.

Hey friends and future authors, today I have a great episode for you because I'm gonna tell you why I always recommend that my clients or my non-clients when I'm doing a consult with somebody self-publish your first book. Why you don't want to go with a hybrid or a traditional publisher for your first book. Now I'm gonna start off with some horror stories, not because I want to scare you, but because I know these are the stories I hear every day. These are the stories that take amazing creative people who want to be authors and just crush their dreams.

Horribly crushed their dreams, burned down to the ground with ashes and sweat and everything. So I was just at a financial creators conference called FinCon last week, and I talked to a lot of people. Most people don't have books there, some people did. And one of the gals I talked to, she said that she has is an author. She's published a book and she seemed really sad and really downtrodden. And I couldn't figure out why. And so I started asking her questions, you know, just curious on most people are excited to become an author.

She was the complete opposite. And I was just wondering why she wasn't so excited about being an author, because most people are. So as I was getting to talk to her and find out more about her experience, she then told me she went with a hybrid publisher. She has sold 260,000 copies of her book. That's more than half a million copies. And guess what, my friends? Guess how much money she has made off of selling more.

Than a half of a half million copies of her book. Zero dollars. I kid you not. I cannot tell you what the look on her face was like when she was telling me this. I can only partly describe it. But the feeling that I could see in her face, my friends, was just.

A tragedy. Like she was clearly taken by a contract that's this hybrid publishing company. She signed with. I don't think she had a lawyer look over it, which is always what I recommend if you're going with any publisher to get a literary lawyer to look over the contract just to make sure there's not anything like this in it. So clearly, I don't know what they put in this contract, but she has not seen one penny of all that work she put into her book, and she sold.

260,000 copies. Now at a minimum, right? Like that's three to four dollars profit a copy. She should have at least made a million dollars on her book.

Like honestly, that's lowballing it. And and that's a retirement plan. And that's not okay that she sold 260,000 copies of her book through this publisher, and her publisher has not given her a single penny. Now, that could be totally legal, right? That could be totally.

what's in her contract, but that's my point. These hybrid publishers, a lot of them, not all of them, right? But many of them, especially vanity presses, are just out for themselves. They are not concerned whatsoever about the author or the writer, or they don't really have a good moral standing and they just want to make money just for money's sake. I mean, obviously we all need to make money to live in a modern world, right? And I don't have a problem with companies making money. My company makes money, right? I know lots of other entrepreneurs who make

money and you need to make money. But to make money at the expense of someone like that, I feel is extremely unethical and unprofessional. And it shouldn't happen. Like I that's just

evil to me as especially as a creator. I would never want to set spent spend my money on marketing and not make a single dime off my books. Like that's so not okay. So that's one of the reasons why I tell my client to self-publish their first book because then you own everything. You know you own your KDP. You know exactly what you're doing. You are making all the money. If you make a mistake, it's not going to cost you a million dollars, a half million dollars. It might cost you a couple thousand dollars, but that's

Better than a million dollars, but that's where I come in. That's where I come in to with book coaching and publishing consultation. So my clients avoid all of those super costly mistakes, my friends, because I have the knowledge and that I like to share with my clients. That's why, and and my people who are looking to self-publish and are looking to publish their nonfiction book, just like you, because you're that's why you're listening to my podcast. And I want to make sure that everyone I come in contact with has

Has the education and the knowledge to make their best creator choice, to make a choice that fits their goals and their dreams and why they want to write and publish a book. Some people want to write a publishable book because they want to be a well-known household name as an author, and that's fine. Some people don't want to do that, and that's fine too. Some people just want to write their book to hand out as a calling card. So one of my books I recently published from Idea to Outline is just like that. This is basically my calling card. I brought this book to my conference.

Financial creators conference FinCon in Palm Springs a couple weeks ago. And I was handing this out to a few people who I thought would really, really, really be, you know, sh show me, show them what I do and how I work.

And it just really is a great way to show that you're an expert in your field, is to be like, hey, I've got this book. This is what I write about. This is what I speak about. This is what I do day in and day out, 24-7 is I write, edit, and publish books for people. And here's the proof that I do that. This is a proof that I'm the expert because I have my book from Idea to Outline, which people can find on Amazon. They can also find it on my author website at lynnsmarges.com. So there's lots of really great ways.

To show people through a book that you are the expert in your field. So, one number one reason going back to why you want to self-publish your book is just to know that you're not going to be overtaken by somebody else with some crazy contract with crazy you know terms in it that this woman has sold 260,000 books and hasn't made a penny. That's absolutely outrageous. So

Num reason number two you want to self-publish your book is because you have complete creative control over your book. Not the publisher, not the hybrid publisher, not anyone else. You get to make the calls. So

It's like, for example, there is a member in our author support community, which I highly recommend that you join. It's called Self-Publishing for Thought Le for Leaders. And it's on school, which is S-K-O-O-L. If you're listening to this, go to school.com S K-O-O-L and you'll find Self-Publishing for Leaders. You see the picture of me at my desk with my dress on and books. And definitely jump into that community because I've been helping authors in there for the past six months. Help them to get out of these situations and or

Help them to not ever be in these situations that they're stuck and either spending thousands of dollars or they can't get control of their book because a hybrid publisher has hijacked their KDP account. So let me tell you what that looks like. A hybrid publisher signs on with an author, right? I have

An author my community that this has happened to, and I've spoken to her several times about it, and we're trying to troubleshoot how she can fix this. So my author has a had gone with a different hybrid publisher than she's working with now. And the hybrid publisher she was previously working with hijacked her KDP account. Now, what does that mean? So your KDP is your Kindle Direct publishing account. That is Kindle Direct used to be its own independent entity, and Amazon bought them out a long time ago. So

Kindle Direct Publishing KDP is the way you publish on Amazon. It's this the publishing platform on Amazon that you self-publish on. So once you go on, once you have a your regular Amazon account that you buy all your stuff through that gets shipped to your house, you use that same account and you open up a KDP account. So it has the same login, same email, everything. So it's super easy to use. So

Once you log in, you create your KDP account, you upload your books on there. And then once they go live, you're a published author. So what happened to this author is that the hybrid publishing company was like, don't worry about it. We'll set up your KDP account. No one should ever set up your KDP account for you, my friends, because what that means is they're setting up the KD, your KDP account under their name, and you have no access to it. And so this is what happened to one of our members in our community. She had no access to our KDP account.

She didn't even know she had one or how to access it until I asked her, Hey, where's your like when's the last time you checked your KDP account? And she's like, I didn't even know I had one. I don't know how to access it. So I walked her through the steps on how to access it and she couldn't find it under her Amazon account. So that means that her hybrid publisher took over, created a KDP account for her, didn't give her the access to it. So she has no control over her own account.

KDP account that should be connected to her personal Amazon account. So now when she publishes, she's gonna either have to publish under a different last name if she wants to publish on Amazon, or she's gonna have to go back and forth with Amazon. I don't know how long it's gonna take to get

Back that control of that account because that is her book under under an account that she does not have access to, that she has spent her time, money, energy, and effort creating. There's actually two books under that publisher, and the publisher went under, so they're out of business. So there's no way she can even contact the publisher to get her KDP account back. So

Reason number two I always tell my authors, self-publish your book is so you have complete creative control, cre excuse me, complete control over your

KDP account. You want that control. You want to set that up first before you even consider going with a publisher or a hybrid publisher. Set up your KDP account first so that you know you have control over it and no one can hijack your account. Because once you sign up for that KDP account, no one can sign up for it under your email. They have to sign up under a different email to create the account for you. But you want to make sure that your KDP account is your KDP account and no one else has control because then you can't get in there to look at your report.

Report, you can't see how much money you're making, you don't know what's going on with your book, and it's your book. So that's super not cool. So you want to make sure you have control over your KDP account, my friends. So reason number one is that you have complete creative control over anything that you do. You know you're gonna be making the money, you're not gonna have some crazy contract taking all your money from you. Reason number two, you want to self-publish your first book is that you have control over your KDP account. The third reason is you wanna have

Complete creative control. Now, the same author I just talked about, she's with a new hybrid publisher. And the she gave them the title for her book. She gave them the description. And they created this book cover that was absolutely bland and horrible. It was literally like a library bookshelf with a seat in front of it. There's no people in it. There's no interaction. It's not interesting. It's super boring. And I would pass over that book in a cover in a heartbeat. and it's

This her story is about two people interacting with each other, going through like trials and tribulations. And this book cover does not describe any of that. And so she told them, Hey, I've created this book cover. She created her own book cover on her own time. It looks amazing. She showed, she did a comparison online, like, hey, which book cover do you like the best? She showed the publisher book cover. She showed her book cover. And everyone, hands down, picked her book cover. I picked her book cover. Her book cover was beautiful, it was beautiful colors.

It was engaging. When you looked at it, you could clearly tell what the story is about. You could clearly see, you know, like that there is some kind of trial and tribulation in it from the look on the people's faces on the cover. It was an amazing cover that she created. But her she went back to her publishing company and said, look, I have surveyed people. I shared them your cover. I shared them my cover. Everybody preferred my cover. I went and use my cover. And they said, Well, the reason why your book cover turned out so bad is because of your description. If you change your book description, we'll change your cover.

Which is absolute nonsense because your book description has nothing to do with what your cover looks like. Your book description is your book description. Your book cover is your book cover, right? Your book cover literally people decide if they wanna

Buy your book within 10 seconds of looking at your book cover. So you want to make sure you have a book cover that's very attractive, that hooks people, that's interesting, that's you know, like emotionally provoking. And also the second thing that attracts people to your book is your description on the back of your book. It has to hook them in, it has to get them interested, it has to solve their pain points if it's a nonfiction. So you want to make sure that your back book cover description and your book cover itself.

is really intriguing. Not

Not intriguing, like, hey, I don't know what this is about, but intriguing as in people know what the book's about. They know it's gonna solve, but that the picture is really interesting. And looking at the picture and reading the back of the book, people want to find out more, so they buy your book, right? So you want to have complete creative control and self-publishing allows you that. Now, if you make some mistakes and you're complete, at least creative control, at least they were your mistakes, and you can always change them. So once you publish on Amazon, my friends, you're not locked in. You can upload a new manuscript as

Long as the same edition, you can upload a new new book cover. People are like, hey, you know, the book cover is not really great. You can always upload a new book cover later on. So you can get it redesigned and upload it. And then maybe that new book cover is going to generate more sales because it's more intriguing, more interesting. So those are the three reasons, my friend. I tell people to self-publish your first book. Reason number one, you don't get stuck in contracts that don't pay you any money or that you end up losing money on, or that's

suck away your creative control. Reason number two is you want complete creative control over your work, whether that's contract or no, right? You want to make sure you have that creative control. And reason number three is that you want to make sure

That you have complete control over your KDP account as well. So having that control and knowing the ropes, right? Once you have your first book self-published, if you want to go with a hybrid publisher or a traditional publisher, then that's great. But you know what to look for. You know the red flags, you understand how the process works, and you're not going in blind. So that's why you always want to publish, self-publish your first book. And if you

Have any questions about publishing? Make sure to join my author support community, self-publishing for leaders on school. If you're watching this on YouTube, the link is right underneath this video. Click on the link, join today, and avoid all of these publishing mistakes that I'm talking about today, my friends. You definitely do not want these self-publishing mistakes or publishing mistakes to get in the way of becoming an author. Or once you become an author, just being super disappointed with the process. Cause I felt my heart went out to that poor woman.

Met at the conference, who she just look on her face, she's just so like defeated. And that's not what you should be when you be an author, right? Like the book marketing is hard and it's tiring, but you should be excited that you're an author and excited that you've published a book, not feel defeated. So join my group, self-publishing for thought leaders, so you don't feel defeated in your book, my friends. All right, Feds and Future Authors, remember, this is your work. This is your creative piece. You're putting pouring your heart and soul into it, self-publish it so you have complete control.

All right, until next week, this is Linda Liquid reminding you to keep writing, keep dreaming, and keep moving forward. Your book is waiting to be born.