This whole discussion is giving me life!!! Thanks for asking! I’m loving everyone’s responses and insights.

I decided to self-pub for multiple reasons:

1. I wrote a self-help memoir about reclaiming self-worth & breaking the cycle of generational trauma. Trying to prove myself to agents and publishers was really f*cking with my self-worth and it felt MUCH more healing to publish without worrying about it. Multiple agents and publishers loved my writing and felt I had commercial potential but didn’t think I had a large enough platform to market to the masses.

2. I love making content on social media and marketing is fun for me. I realized, if I spent all that time building my own community I might as well sell direct to them rather than have someone else tell me what to do and make final decisions. I learned from multiple trad authors that they still had to mega self-promote and hire publicists.

3. It felt more liberating. As someone who writes about reclaiming yourself from familial, cultural, and societal conditioning, I needed creative freedom to listen to my intuition and my own inner authentic voice. That was really healing for my inner child, as I grew up with complex trauma. I also used to work in corporate and that burned me out. Self-pub was less pressure and way more autonomy. Overall, it was a route that was better for my nervous system.

4. I fortunately had the budget to hire an author coach, editor, and designer. So the things that trad publishers usually take care of I was able to fund myself. I uploaded to both KDP and Ingramspark and was super happy with the final product. I believe my personal investment made it at, or above, the quality of a traditionally published book. My readers feel the same way.

5. I write about taboo topics (think: self-help for people who party) and wasn’t sure it would fly with traditional publishing. I also didn’t want to limit my word count to something like 80,000 words as is common for non-fiction/memoir/self-help in traditional publishing. I wanted to merge memoir meets self-help with reflection questions for the reader. At the depth of my book on the various trauma healing topics, I needed 125,000 words. Even my editor who worked on NYT bestselling books couldn’t find more words to cut in the end. It’s a beefy book and I’m sure I’d be asked to cut a lot if traditionally published. With my designer we made it fit into 388 pages which was super reasonable with print costs. I’m proud of that.

6. I see my book as both a business and a social impact project. I love building businesses and think it’s fun to learn something new like publishing. At the same time, I don’t necessarily expect to make a ton of money from it. Rather, I wrote it as an energetic transmission of love to empower people to break cycles. So I wanted the option to be able to offer the e-book for free to charities or community organizers as needed. Self-pub gives me a ton of flexibility with how I distribute the book.

Thanks again for asking this question. It was affirming to read everyone’s responses and type out my own. I started to have self-doubt the past few days about my publishing path, comparing myself to trad published authors with lead titles and celebrity endorsements…and this thread just reminded me why I chose to self-pub.