I have self-published 2 books now and I wanted to share some advantages of self-publishing with you guys now that I feel that I have enough experience. Sometime down the line, I will write disadvantages to self-publishing as well so you can decide the best route for yourself.

 You basically have total say in the book cover. This does come out of your own time and pocket. I would not recommend making your own unless you have experience and can make the cover look professional and realistic. It is better to search for a really good cover designer. These can be hard to come by but I have found a few by taking the time to search.

 You basically have total say in the format of your book. This also comes out of your own time. Formatting your book is just as time consuming as revising. It takes a lot of time to decide on what looks best and what matches the theme of your book. Fonts, paper dimensions and headers take up a lot of time and can be frustrating.  

 You get most of the royalties. Usually by self-publishing an author can get anywhere between 60% to 90% of the royalties. Smashwords and Kindle Direct Publishing gives you about 90%. This was a pretty big part of it for me because I wrote the book, revised, revised, and revised it some more, so I wanted to get most of the money because I put in a lot of work. I'm not saying that traditional publishers don't put in a lot of work; I'm only saying that I did not want to be paid in advances for my books. I wanted to try my hand at self-publishing to see how I would like it and to test the waters to see how much I could make on my own.
 It's been an eyeopening experience.

 You are responsible for revisions/editing. Revising is a hassle, I know. It is probably the #1 thing I hate because I struggle to delete unneeded parts. But I have complete control of what I want to delete and change. I am completely open to criticism, so I always send my books to my beta reader to see what she has to say about parts of my book and then I go back to fix them before sharing it with her again. But if I feel like something is too important to delete, I try to find a way to make that part better instead. 

 No deadlines. You can take your time finishing your book to make it as good as it can be. If you're writing a series, then this should be very important to you. Life often gets in the way of our plans to write, so it can take a while to finish writing a book and then revising it several times. All of these things are very time consuming. Having a deadline can pressure us to just write, whether it is good material or not.

 All of these are reasons why I self-published. It doesn't mean it's for everyone. I hope one day I will get a book published traditionally, just to get the experience.

Can you think of any more advantages? Leave a comment down below!
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-Ashley Earley