It is very rare to relate Self-Publishing with Academics, as this market has been dominated by University Press and prestigious journal publishers for almost half a century. Cambridge published its first book in 1584 making it the oldest publishing house in the world. It is not difficult to understand that with the strict peer review process and scientific attitude, even with the trend of explosive increase of self-publishing in the 21 st century, the university professors and researchers still hold themselves back from this approach.
Let’s look at some figures: Self-published book titles in production tripled from 2006 to 2012. 2008 was a watershed year; for the first time in history, more books were self-published than those published traditionally. In 2009, 76% of all books released were self-published, while publishing houses reduced the number of books they produced.Back in 2008, there were 85,468 self-published titles; in 2011, 247,210; by 2012, 459,000; by 2013, 458,564;by 2017, 786,935 self-published ISBNs.During a period of six years, growth of self-published titles was a remarkable 218%.These numbers don’t count titles published by Amazon’s KDP which identifies books by ASIN numbers instead of ISBN numbers. In 2018, 1.68 million books were self-published. However, these self-published books are mostly falling in the romance, fantasy, thriller, science fiction and literacy.
However, with the benefits of self-publishing has brought to the writing world, it is hard to let us say NO.
- The author can create the books based on the most imminent needs from the readers, in the academic world, it will be undergraduate students,scholars or intelligent non-academics, without worrying about the lengthy process tradition from most of the university press or publishers.
- There is no cost for the writers when they are using most of the publishing platforms online like KNiTO ,
- The features of peer review and collaboration still allow the book to follow the strict scientific attitude.
- No need to mention that the books can be distributed to the readers immediately to their devices, and you can see the readership analytics to see the feedback from the readers in time.
- A good share of royalty can be channeled back to your account when every sale happens.
- Lastly, the modern ePUB 3 format facilitates the input of interactive assets for educational books especially, the audios, videos, quizzes,gamification, tutorials can be created and accessed intuitively which make the reading experience more engaging.
Many publishers and writers have discovered the benefits of ePUB 3 and started publishing their content in such format.
KNiTO book store is a ePUB 3 only bookshop on the market now, with its powerful authoring studio and interactive, reader feature, you can make the publish, sell and read in one stop. Check www.knito.com for further details.