Apart the book I wrote for Routledge, Becoming an Outstanding Languages Teacher, all the other books I’ve written, or co-written with Gianfranco Conti (and recently Steve Glover) have been independently published through the Amazon platform called KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). There have been some good reasons for doing this.
1. If you are already well known to teachers by reputation or on social media you are not building a reputation from scratch so you can market your work without a publisher. Both Gianfranco and I had already been blogging and writing language teaching resources before we wrote The Language Teacher Toolkit in 2016. This is, by the way, still our best selling book, now in its second edition.
2. Royalties are a lot higher with KDP than with a publisher. A typical publisher may offer you 10% for an education book. With KDP the royalty is up to 70%. That is a huge difference, especially if you are co-authoring. While the main reason for writing teacher books is not financial, it certainly makes the endeavour a bit more worthwhile.
3. When you self-publish, once your manuscript is ready, you upload it to KDP and within hours (after it has passed its checks) your book is out. With a publisher it can take six months from presentation of manuscript to publication. This is a little frustrating. Does it mean that a published book is better? More accurate? Well, proof-reading is given to third party companies who, in my limited experience (my wife also publishes), do not do a perfect job. As long as you have thoroughly edited and proofed your own book - get help with this - the result should be as good. It’s annoying when the odd typo escapes detection, but this is barely significant.
4. Independently publishing gives you total creative control. This includes cover design and formatting. I’m not saying that a publisher will interfere with the content - Routledge didn’t in my case - but it's reassuring to know that you can write what you want.
5. The Amazon universe, whatever you may think of Bezos and the company - means that your book is immediately available around most of the world, on the platform most people use. With KDP, if you opt for what they call Expanded Distribution, your book can appear on other sites as well as in bookshops.
6. The author dashboard you get with KDP allows you to track sales and royalties month by month. You also see where your books are being sold. Currently, my books with Gianfranco are selling primarily in the UK, Australia and the USA. With a publisher you could probably get this information, but it would be less easy.
7. Publishers do not actually provide much support or promotion - at least that’s been true in my case. The best promoter of a book is yourself, through social media such as Facebook (professional groups), Instagram, X and Bluesky. Nor do they offer better quality print in my experience.
8. An additional point to mention is that it is perfectly possible to publish the same book on another platform, as well as KDP, although you do need a separate ISBN. We do so through Piefke Publishing in the the far east. This is the company through which many of Gianfranco’s EPI books are marketed, for example in Australia. With a traditional publisher you could not do this.
9. If at any point you wish to make updates to your book on KDP, you simply adjust your pdf or Word manuscript and upload it. The new version appears within a day or two. For example, you might notice an error you wish to correct, or upload a newer edition.
If you are a language teacher with ideas to share blogs (substacks are all the rage), YouTube, LinkedIn and Facebook are all useful platforms. But if you want to share something meatier or photocopiable, an independently published book can be a great solution. My best piece of advice would be to get a good editor and proof-reader. AI is, of course, very helpful in this regard.
Comments
Post a Comment