Academic Self Publishing

On other pages .....

► A short history of self publishing

► How to self publish

►A short style guide

►Some sample academic titles

Self-publication - a short guide, with an assessment of the pros and cons for academic writers and others.

Do-it-yourself - the future of publishing

The information on these pages concerns specifically the publication of academic books in print form, notably as paperbacks; some of the information also relates to other forms of publishing, such as e-books, hard-cover books and document-sharing websites. However strictly speaking, the term self-publishing refers to the creation of books and monographs for distribution either privately or through traditional or online  bookstores, or on e-book readers such as Kindles. It does not cover document sharing on the Internet, which is an altogether different and lighter process.

In the past

Not so very long ago, academics who wanted to publish their work - something that had become vital in the publish or perish atmosphere of higher education - could do so with relative ease and obscurity. In the fragmented world of pre-Internet academia, it was difficult to know which publishers had high academic standards, and which publishers, particularly smaller university presses and less-well-known commercial publishers, had little or no quality control in place. Bibliographical references had to be taken at face value, as it was very difficult to check out titles from the majority of the world's publishing houses.

   There were of course the "majors", the large publishing houses,  national or international, who had a global reputation. An academic book or journal  published by OUP or Cambridge or Yale, or Wiley or McGraw Hill or Hachette or Springer or a similarly high-profile publisher with trusted editorial boards, would by definition look good on any academic's resumé or CV. Until the Internet came along, recruitment and promotion committes in universities worldwide had no means of actually checking up on the publications listed on an academic's profile, unless they happened to have the book or the journal to hand in their university library or department, or could rapidly buy it or obtain it on an inter-library loan. CV's listing books published by major publishing companies, and articles published in top-ranking journals, thus tended to find their way to the top of the pile, since actually checking out academics' less visible publications was a complex process unless candidates actually provided copies of their works, which was generally not the case.
  For titles published by small publishers, or by publishers in other countries, checking was even harder.

The new order

  Fast forward to the 2020s and the situation is very different. The Internet, and with it academic document sharing sites, have put academic publications from the whole world  just a click or two away. Academics on one continent can consult or buy  books and journals published on any other continent with an ease that was impossible at the start of the century; information on the quality and practices of academic journals – are they peer reviewed? do they publish interesting articles? – is instantly accessible. As a result, serious academic job applicants no longer have an absolute need to present CVs or resumés with a list of publications including big name and reputed publishers and internationally known journals; any publication from any publisher can be checked for quality in a world where aspiring applicants can even include digital copies of their books, or extracts from them, with any application.  

   Of course, having work published by a major international publishing house remains a strong plus on any academic's CV or list of publications, and is likely to remain the gold standard. There is no change at this level. What has changed is that the playing field has been levelled up for those many academics and aspiring academics – probably the majority of us – who have never had any work published by a major internationally known academic publisher, but on the other hand have had interesting and original work published by local university presses, small lesser-known publishers, or even through vanity publishing or self publishing. These "minor" publishing channels, that once offered little or no visibility beyond their own printed catalogues, can now offer the same visibility as that provided by the majors, with their powerful marketing departments,  or at least can be made to provide this visibility when it is needed. Yet although books published by minor or local publishers can now  be much more easily found and acquired than in the past, it can still remain very difficult for academics to actually find a publisher willing to take on their book.  In many cases, books will not get published at all as academics give up the seemingly fruitless and stressful task of trying to find a publisher. In this scenario, self publishing offers an obvious solution to the fundamental binary question: to publish or not to publish?

   Many traditional publishers are swamped with publication requests, and unless a book publishing project comes with a grant to help with publication costs, or from an already-published author, the chances of acceptance may be low. University presses have limited resources, and commercial publishers are looking for titles that will sell. Major commercial publishers in the Springer / Wiley / McGraw-Hill league have it easy;  they can just slap a 300-dollar price tag on an academic title, in the knowledge that enough university libraries will automatically buy it to make it profitable for them; but smaller publishers do not have this option unless the author is particularly renowned. Most academic authors are not particularly renowned; many are quite unknown outside their own university or college. Besides, when a book has a $ 300 cover price, very few sales will be to individuals, almost all will be to institutions, so getting a book published with a high cover price by a major academic publisher may be a boost to an academic career, but it will not lead to the book being made available to as many readers as might like to buy it.

   This is where the new option of academic self publishing comes in, removing the stressful task of searching for a publisher,  allowing a book to be published at a reasonable price and... a big plus for many academics... rewarding the writer with some royalties at the same time.

Self publishing

   Self publishing, particularly of the print-on-demand ¹ variety, is the fastest growing area in the world of book publishing, and alert academics are jumping at the opportunity. With self publication, any academic can  publish research (books, monographs, dissertations) or teaching material, and do so at no cost and in a form that can be purchased on demand by students, other academics, libraries and the general public. Being the publisher, the author generally retains all the rights to his or her publication, including the right to send electronic copies to friends, colleagues, and recruitment boards.
   While the self-service nature of self publishing means that the main self-publishing platforms like Kindle KDP or IngramSpark have in place absolutely no quality control regarding content, let alone regarding academic value, authors have no interest in publishing rubbish, even if it is free to publish, since there can be little or no use in publishing, let alone publicising, rubbish. Attaching a copy of a poorly researched book to an academic job application is unlikely to produce the desired result.

   Apart from the fact that it can be done for free, the greatest advantage of self-publishing (and there are many, see below) is that anyone can publish anything, just as long as it meets certain ethical standards and is produced in an appropriate format; besides, doing so is fairly simple (► see how to self publish).  The preferred file format for preparing books for self publishing is .pdf, though KDP accept (with warnings) documents saved in .rtf  or even .docx formats. Self publishing can also be more or less instant, and it allows authors to completely bypass what was often in the past, and is still to this day with many traditional publishers, the stress, delay, and trauma of finding a publisher.

   It remains true, however, that many professors, particularly in universities and departments that imagine themselves to be a cut above the others, still look condescendingly at job-applicants whose research has been published solely or mostly by minor publishers, unfamiliar university presses, vanity publishers, Internet document sharing websites like Academia (which is a commercial website, not an academic institution) and  self publishing.  This state of affairs is not going to change overnight, but self publishing is still in its infancy and is a fast-growing option. It is inevitable that the more good quality and interesting academic books get self-published, the more self-publishing as a genre will gain in credibility.  It is a fairly safe bet to suggest that well before the middle of the century, self publishing of academic titles will be considered as part of the norm – if not the new norm.

Advantages of self publising

• Full control.  Depending on the self-publishing channel used, the author can maintain full, or almost full control over all aspects of publication.  Content, layout, format (paperback, hardback and/or e-book) distribution channels, and even pricing. Both KDP and IngramSpark now offer a full range of publishing choices - hardback, paperback or e-book.
• Costs .  There need be no cost at all, though the real cost will depend on how much the author does himself. While many platforms charge a fee, Kindle KDP, which is the world's largest self-publishing platform, has no upfront fees, and they even provide a free ISBN. IngramSpark publish for free, but authors living in any country other than the USA must first buy their own ISBN from their national ISBN agency.. To be completely free, an author will need to write his book, format it in a word-processing program, convert it from a standard word-processing page size (A4 or US letter) to one of the page formats accepted by the self-publishing platform, which can be done with any word processing package including the open-source LibreOffice suite,  and save it as a .pdf file (not always required, but highly recommended). It will also be necessary to provide a cover - but most self-publishing platforms provide free templates. For more details  ► see How to self publish.
     If the author is unable to master these fairly simple skills, then formatting a book for self publication can be outsourced to someone who can, which will then of course involve a cost.,... which will hopefully be offset later on by royalty payments.
• Royalties.  With self publishing, authors are generally free to fix their own cover prices, and the publishing platform will pay royalties. This can be a novel experience for some acedemics who are more in the habit of paying to have their books published, than of being paid royalties. In many cases, authors will be able to fix considerably higher royalty rates than those obtained from commercial publishers.
• Reeditions.  Some print-on-demand self-publishing platforms, including Kindle, allow authors to reedit their books as often as they want. This can be a great advantage for academic writers, as it allows text to be updated, footnotes to be added, typos to be removed, and other changes to be made when and where they are needed, something that is quite impossible with traditional publishing.
• Speed and ease. For a writer who masters the preparation of  book for self-publishing, the time lapse from completing the manuscript to having the book up and running and available for purchase can be as little as 72 hours, or even less if systems are not overloaded and there are no issues to be corrected. The author also avoids the hassle and long waits that are involved in getting a book or paper accepted for publication by a regular publisher.

Disadvantages of self publishing

• Do it all yourself. There is a learning curve, and there are techniques that must be mastered (► see How to self publish)... but on the whole academics are pretty intelligent people and should be able to master the ropes relatively easily. And indeed, it can be argued that in a day and age where traditional publishers also require authors to present their manuscripts ready-formated to their required specifications, formating a document for self publishing is no different from preparing it for any other kind of publishing.  Obviously however, if you are an already-published academic and a name sought after by traditional publishers, then going through well established publishers may offer a much easier solution, since the publisher will do a lot of the work.
• No editors.  Self publishing is just that: doing it yourself. Traditional publishers have in place whole teams of editors, proof-readers and designers, who (in theory at least) will thoroughly vet any manuscript before it is printed, to make sure that it is properly presented, paginated, coherent, and free of typos (spelling and other typographical mistakes).  With self publishing, it is the author who is responsible for all this. Relying on the spell-checking and grammar-checking tools that come with word-processing platforms is not sufficient, as these have a nasty habit of introducing new mistakes as well as correcting those they actually find. Self-publishing authors need to be aware of questions of grammar and style and must attempt to remove all typos through careful proof reading, and if they manage to remove most of them, they will be doing as well as – and in some cases, better than – certain major academic publishers whose reputation for producing typo-free books is not what it used to be.
• Little or no marketing.  This is the big drawback of self-publishing, specially self publishing with free platforms like Kindle. The publisher will not market your book.... or will only do so for a fee, and with no guarantee of result. Self-publishing platforms to not send reps round to schools, libraries and book  fairs, they do not edit glossy catalogues, and they do not buy advertising space for your title in targeted magazines. Marketing is up to you. This may not be much of a drawback if you publish a work in a disciplinary niche where you yourself have access to ways of publicising your work; but for anything more general, marketing can be difficult. On the other hand, many (most?) academics do not publish in order to become rich, so maximising sales of a work is not necessarily among the objects of self publishing when academic titles are concerned.
• Pricing problems.  As stated above, authors are generally free to fix their own prices, but the publishing platform will set limits. Some platforms, such as Ingram Spark, will automatically ensure that titles are available to bookstores and library purchasers, though for this privilege, they charge fees. Kindle's KDP platform offers this option in some markets. The option is called extended distribution, and is available in the USA and the UK; but using extended distribution requires the author to set cover prices higher, and in some cases much higher, before any royalties are earned through extended distribution, and doing so may negatively impact sales through KDP's main distribution channel, which is Amazon. Books published with IngramSpark automatically get bookstore distribution, and become visible on the online catalogues of leading bookstores around the world, including Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, and many others.
      A word of warning though. Any author publishing with IngramSpark is strongly advised to make the books "non returnable".
• Library purchases. Many public libraries do not, or do not want to, buy books from Amazon, so for writers who expect their book to be available to libraries and bookstores, IngramSpark offers a better publishing channel than KDP.
     Unless a book is available through the traditional channels used by university and academic libraries worldwide, it may be de-facto excluded from many or most public libraries. KDP offers a way round this, which is to sign up to "extended distribution" in the USA and the UK. The big problem with extended distribution is that Amazon still wants their full share of commission on any item sold, so the author needs to increase the price of any title sold through extended distribution, or else receive no commission on sales. Using Amazon's extended distribution may require a rise in the book price anyway, as the minimum price that can be set for a book published by KDP is higher if the book is going to be made available through extended distribution, than it would otherwise be.
    The way round this is to publish not with Kindle, but with IngramSpark... or to use both.The publishing process is pretty similar. A book published with IngramSpark will - they claim - be available to 40,000 retailers, online stores, libraries, and universities worldwide.

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Notes
1. Print-on-demand.  With print-on-demand (POD), a book is stored electronically, and copies are printed to order, often one at a time. In terms of production costs, POD has been a game changer, doing away with economies of scale, and with the costly jobs of  print-runs (printing maybe 500 copies by offset), holding stock (books that have been printed but not sold), selling to retailers on a sale-or-return basis, and in the event of poor sales the final and valueless operation of "pulping". POD publishers, which means all self-publishing platforms, have thus done away with the biggest overheads and fixed costs  that traditional publishing needs to pay for, allowing any title to be sold directly at little over cost price, and still be profitable for the writer and the publishing platform.

List your self-published academic title

In order to illustrate the range of academic titles now being self published by their authors or academic institutions, Academic-self-publishing.com  is happy to list a selection of representative titles in the discipliary fields of arts and humanities, economic and social sciences, and  the sciences.  To submit a title for listing, please use the contact information indicated below.