Becoming a published author is the dream of many writers, but one that often goes unrealized. In the world of a writer, rejection is everywhere. If the thought of securing a literary agent to represent your work leaves you feeling woozy and you fear never landing a contract with a traditional publisher, you might consider self-publishing. Years ago, publishing your own book was not a possibility, but it is now and there are several advantages to doing so.

Greater Royalties

There is the potential to earn a lot more money on each book sale with self-publishing. Traditional publishing companies typically pay authors about 15-20% of net earnings for a published title. The publisher takes a bigger cut for providing a host of services, including editing, layout and design, printing, and marketing. There are always fees for self-publishing, but authors keep more of the profits for themselves than with traditional publishing.

Complete Control

Publishing your book yourself allows you to retain complete control. As the author and publisher, you have the final say regarding every aspect of the book. You decide which edits to implement and what the design layout will look like. You select the title and book cover and you even set the price at which you want to sell your book. The marketing strategy is also yours to decide.

Instant Publication

Once an author has done his or her part writing and revising a book for a traditional publisher, it will still be several months before the final book is available for sale. Time is needed to design a cover, finalize the interior layout, and set the book for printing or digital format. Additionally, the publisher might already have several books in line to be completed before even beginning the design and layout process for your book. Self-publishing eliminates the long wait. Writers can practically publish their books as soon as they are written when they self-publish.

Guaranteed Publication

When you choose to self-publish you are guaranteed to be a published author. You can purchase an ISBN for your title so that your book can be sold in bookstores and through marketplaces like Amazon. It is even possible to publish digital books directly through Amazon and have them available for sale almost immediately. Once that happens, you are officially a published author.

For writers dreaming of seeing their books in print, in either hardcopy or digital format, self-publishing is a realistic way of achieving this. In addition to guaranteed publication, self-publishing offers several other benefits. In the case of earning greater royalties, for instance, self-publishing can even be considered advantageous over traditional publishing.

Writers are communicators who have the time to craft their message. Yet, no matter how many times they go through their work after they finish writing, they miss typos and other mistakes. In the era of speedier production and widespread Internet usage, typos have become more common. The results may be affecting other modes of communication as well, because typos have become more acceptable, according to the Forbes magazine article, Fall Of The Grammar Snobs: How Typos Became Okay.

Publications are churning out work so quickly that proofreading has suffered. Even the New York Times and other well-known newspapers have not escaped publishing glaring typos. While established names and informal social media communications do not suffer monetary harm, eliminating noticeable mistakes is crucial for many businesses.

Typos Cause Online Businesses to Lose Sales

In the article, Spelling mistakes ‘cost millions’ in lost online sales, the BBC reported that Charles Duncombe, an online entrepreneur, said that an analysis of website figures revealed that even one spelling mistake reduces online sales by half. Spelling is important for the credibility of a website, and online businesses, he said, have about six seconds to capture a potential customer’s attention and trust.

Customers who are concerned about credibility are most prone to being put off by spelling errors. As more businesses go online, the importance of the accuracy of website content cannot be underestimated. However, it is not only online businesses that suffer from such errors. A Daily News article titled, New York suffers in an era of error: Typos in signs are a scourge of the city, pointed out that spelling errors are widespread in New York and elsewhere. Such errors can make things worse, as these flaws have a viral effect.

There is a Scientific Reason Writers Miss Typos

Tom Stafford, a psychologist at the University of Sheffield in U.K., said in the Wired article, What’s Up With That: Why It’s So Hard to Catch Your Own Typos, that when writers proofread their own work, their eyes skim over errors because their mind gets in the way and makes the eyes miss what is actually there. Because writers know what they intend to convey, their eyes read one thing, but their brains translates it into what it should be. Hence, even experienced columnists and journalists are prone to such errors.

The Public Editor of the Toronto Star said, in the article titled, Typos won’t go away, no matter how we try: Public Editor, that he was also prone to such errors because he is a speed-reader and he uses a two-finger typing style.

Even though familiarity trips up many writers, they can help proofreaders and editors by reading over their content slowly and by spell checking and grammar checking their work prior to submitting it for publication. People who write frequently have used various tricks to reduce the amount of errors they make, such as reading their text backwards. Nonetheless, proofreaders and editors are more necessary today because of the new dynamics of communication in our era.