Busy professionals who shape their industries with high-quality content seek new ways to solidify their thought leadership–and that quest often leads them to write a business book. It’s an exciting endeavor, but it requires answering a key question: Should I self-publish or work with a traditional publishing house?
These two methods will take you on very different journeys, and it’s up to each individual author to determine which is best for their lifestyle and their objectives. To make the right decision for your unique situation, it’s helpful to weigh the benefits of each.
Benefits of Self-Publishing
There are many benefits to becoming a professional author by self-publishing your book. As a businessperson with a hectic schedule, it’s up to you to decide which factors are most important to you, such as financials, creative control, and the amount of work you’ll put into your book. In fact, one of the biggest advantages that self-publishing has over traditional publishing for busy professionals is the flexibility in the overall project timeline.
Timeline Flexibility
Self-publishing your business book allows you to create your own schedule. Once you’ve written your manuscript, you’ll work with professional editing services to fine-tune it—and you get to take your time making the changes your editors have recommended. This means you can publish your masterpiece while still taking the necessary time to run your company and enjoy your personal life.
By contrast, a traditional publishing house might impose challenging deadlines that don’t leave much breathing room. They’ll dictate the project’s timeline, and if you miss a due date, you could face repercussions that impact your book deal. Because business leaders are frequently faced with intense demands and packed schedules to keep their company thriving, quick turnarounds like these aren’t always possible.
Thought leaders who want to publish a book but can’t find the time in their schedules to sit down and write also have the flexibility of finding a self-publishing service with award-winning ghostwriters. This is a great way to maintain full creative control and have your book written in your voice while still being able to focus on what you do best: running your company.
Full Creative Control
Traditional publishing houses often make alterations to their authors’ books to appeal to a wider audience. While this might sound enticing to some writers, it usually means that according to the terms of your book deal, your publisher can change the title, the message, the themes, and large sections of your overall content.
However, when you self-publish your business book, you maintain full creative control. Your editing team will make suggestions on how to improve and strengthen your manuscript—but at the end of the day, the decision to make any changes is yours, and the book will remain your story in your voice.
Because business books are inherently nonfiction and are methods to amplify the author’s voice and thought leadership, losing control over the content is a dealbreaker for many authorpreneurs.
Market Where You Want, When You Want
In addition to maintaining creative and scheduling control, you’ll be in charge of the marketing strategy that drives positive results for your self-published book. Instead of a traditional publisher controlling where, when, and how you promote your book, you have the freedom and creative license to advertise however you’d like on social media, build your own author website, cross-market with your company, and engage in other marketing initiatives that speak to you.
No Agent Necessary
Authorpreneurs who prefer to traditionally publish their business books usually require a literary agent to sell their manuscripts to publishing houses. However, when you self-publish, you avoid the time-consuming process of finding, vetting, and hiring an agent—plus, you’ll save yourself the commission you’d have to pay an agent.
More Royalties in Your Pocket
Speaking of finances, self-publishing allows you to keep more profits and royalties than traditional publishing. A publishing house will keep a hefty percentage of your book sales to offset the expenses they’ve incurred backing your book as well as any advances you might’ve received as part of your book deal.
If you self-publish, though, you’ll keep most of the profits and royalties and will make more money each time you sell a copy of your book. As a business leader, you know that time is money…and self-publishing rewards the time you spent crafting your business book with more money each time your readers buy it.
Despite all these benefits, some business authors opt to work with a publisher instead of self-publishing. Although at first glance there do appear to be some advantages of the traditional method, thought leaders who dive more deeply often find that self-publishing is a better fit.
Benefits of Traditional Publishing
Businesspeople with hectic schedules sometimes gravitate toward traditional publishing their business book because it’s more of a hands-off process than self-publishing. While it’s true that a publishing house will likely handle your book’s editing, design, and formatting, they may have the authority to do so without your input based on your contract with them.
For this reason, established and aspiring authorpreneurs instead choose to partner with self-publishing services that specialize in business books. These companies take on the hard work of refining and designing your book so your target audience hears your message loud and clear—and in your unique voice.
Another reason why business authors might choose to traditionally publish their masterpiece is the book marketing power that publishing houses wield. Publishers tend to have robust networks of distribution they can use to promote your book, but just like they’ll maintain creative control of your content, they’ll remain in charge of your book marketing strategies as well. Fortunately, the same self-publishing services that can help ghostwrite, edit, format, and design your masterpiece also excel at promoting business books, offering you the freedom to choose your book marketing avenues.
So, which will it be: self-publishing or traditional publishing? It’s time to ask yourself some questions so you make the right decision for yourself and your book.
Weighing the Options
The decision to self-publish versus work with a traditional publishing house is a big one, and it shouldn’t be taken lightly. To help you make the right choice, ask yourself a few questions:
- Is it important to you to maintain creative control over your book’s content and marketing, or do you prefer that your publisher make their suggested changes to and dictate the marketing efforts?
- Do you need a flexible writing, revision, publishing, and marketing schedule, or will you be able to accommodate any deadlines that a publishing house requests?
- Have you allocated a marketing budget to promote your book, or does a book deal with built-in advertising terms appeal to you?
Reflecting on and answering these questions will help you determine whether to self-publish your business book or find a publishing house to support it. Either way, our experts will be here to support you.
We’re Dedicated to Your Success
Expert content is incredibly powerful, and we’re the experts in marketing and communication strategies. We’ve got the talent, expertise, and creativity to help you reach new heights as a thought leader—and since we understand the hectic schedule of busy professionals, we know how to work within your timeline.
Schedule a consultation with our business content experts today to find out how we can support you and your book!
Just can’t get enough? 
