KDP vs Publishing house

Hey everyone! Hope you're doing well and are enjoying the summer in spite of the heat and the workload for some of you who may, like me, be at the fullest season right now.

In this article, I am going to talk about my choice for self-publishing, and what differentiates it from the traditional method of publishing houses. I will take that opportunity also to enlighten you about the reason why my manuscript was put aside for months before being corrected and published. So ready? Let's go then!

First try in a publishing house

Among all the manuscripts sent to publishing house, only a very small percentage reach publication.

I started writing my novel in Autumn 2022 and needed solely a few weeks to elaborate the first draft. Along the months that followed, I proofread it, and edited it in a couple of steps (about the general structure of the plot, then more in details). And, adding a piece of information, I love speaking English and before doing the job I currently have I had studied Applied Foreign Languages at college because at the time I aimed to become a translator and intepret. In the end, it didn't happen, as I graduated the first year but not the second, yet it allowed me to gain skills in techniques of translation. Therefore, an idea came to me, a bit quirky yet not so much: that of translating my own novel in English.

That was, subsequently, the following step of my writing process. We were now in 2024 (it looks long but I don't write on full-time), and I've been sending my manuscript to a first publishing house (whose name I won't reveal) in 2025, after the translation and having started to work on another writing project. After a while, I was replied that my manuscript was refused and needed a profound work on writing. Feeling a bit lost, as I didn't know where to start to improve my writing, adding to that that I was starting another job abroad, I let the manuscript aside again to work on my other project. Since I was abroad, I considered following up my researches of publishing houses once I would be back in France.

However, I was often thinking about it and in fact, I browsed them through internet (again, being abroad, I couldn't find libraries with examples of French publishing houses to which my manuscript fitted the criteria, and became increasingly demoralized: indeed, there are lots of publishing houses, and there are also a lot of manuscripts, and the more the better! But it results that most of the publishing houses no longer accept manuscript for an unknown period because they find themselves overloaded with proofreadings to do.

I started to consider self-publishing more and more: it can be intimidating, it gives more responsibilities, but on the other hand it allows having more control over your own book and generating more income than passing through a publishing house.

The alternative KDP from Amazon®

イツ マイノ!! (I haz published it)

By the way, I would like to clarify that this is not a sponsoring post, I just talk about KDP because according to my personal choices, it's the option that seemed the most suiting. I don't really know about other self-publishing methods and platforms, but if you're interested in that I could still do some researches and tests on my own to talk about it further in another article (that could be interesting indeed, let me know in the comments if you would like to know more about the self-publishing universe).

KDP, it's simply the platform which I've heard the most about and actually my decision has been taken quite rapidly. The period between the delivery of the book and its publication is rather short (about a week) and the functioning of the platform is very intuitive and easy of use. Furthermore, you can publish under different formats (e-book, paperback and binded), which makes it more accessible. To this day, I am highly satisfied with this platform.

What gave a new impetus to my project was to hear about the contest of the (plumes francophones 2025) that is taking place right now on KDP, and I immediately linked it to my manuscript that was waiting: after all, why not self-publishing?

I didn't mind assuming the responsibility of the author, the editor and graphic designer (for the cover), and it is a way of learning as well. Thus, my first manuscript, which I cannot wait to reveal the title will be the happy participant of that contest, may fate be favourable towards it.

The idea here is not to gratify self-publishing while downplaying traditional publishing methods, it's just my personal experience, and it will be different for everyone. Some may find their publishing house from the first try, others may have to apply many times in different places, while for others self-publishing will be the first choice directly.

It's that would I had been in France, I would have certainly kept the research of publishing houses going on so I could send my manuscript and earn chances of replies, maybe even I could have received a positive answer from a publishing house accepting to make my book published. But from abroad, and one thing leading to another, that's how things went. We'll see where this venture goes.

Next week, I should receive my ISBN number and the feedback from my proofreader to see if everything is convenient for the book to be published (there will undoubtedly be many editings to add, so I expect the second half of August to be well busy, hehe... but I'm holding on!). Once the book will be sent to KDP, I will reveal the title and cover of it. Until then, wishing you good readings and a beautiful rest of summer! (Be careful with the mosquitoes and sunburns!)

-WJ-