Self-Publishing Is For Control Freaks.

Holly Ward is the third self-published author to hit No. 1 on the DBW Ebook Best-Seller list in 2013, an incredible achievement considering that her title, Damaged, is up against big books from major publishers and established authors. For instance, the No. 3 book this week is the new Nora Roberts title from Penguin, Whiskey Beach. It’s a book that in years past would be almost guaranteed to shoot to No. 1 in its debut week.

Unlike the other self-published authors to hit No. 1 this year — Jennifer L. Armentrout and Rachel Van Dyken — Ward, who writes under the name H.M. Ward as well as Ella Steele, never published a book with a traditional publisher. She never gained the experience of what it takes to bring a book to market and make it successful from a secondary source — she’s self-taught.

Early on in her short writing career, Ward was in the early stages of working with a publisher for her first title, Demon Kissed (March 2011) but pulled out before the book was published.

“I have kind of a control freak personality and I didn’t think it was a good match so I backed away from that [working with the publisher] and decided to self-publish,” she said. “I did everything from the cover design to the model shoots to the content. I really like the level of control in everything when you do self-publication.”

When given the choice between self-publishing and working with a traditional publisher, why do authors choose one or the other?

According to a recent report in the New York Times, quality editorial and marketing efforts keep authors coming back to publishers, but that’s simply not true. While editorial and marketing are factors, they’re nowhere near the top of the list.

According to a study of nearly 5,000 authors Digital Book World published earlier this year, asking them about preferences when publishing among other things, here are the two most important factors, in order, for authors when publishing a book:

1. Reach of distribution
2. Amount of creative control retained (read: exactly what Ward wants)

The other factors that authors rank as important include marketing support, editorial and production support, ease of publishing process, cost of publishing process, prestige of working with a major publisher and having books in bookstores and form of compensation (royalties vs. advance plus royalties). (See chart below.)

So, the kind of control that Ward wants is actually quite typical for authors and it’s something that self-publishing caters to quite well. This should be disconcerting for traditional publishers, which typically offer a bevy of services and benefits but not control over a manuscript, its packaging and how it’s marketed and sold.

However, according to the report, distribution is far and away the most important factor and that should be comforting to publishers because, at this point, established publishers are the only reliable path into bricks-and-mortar bookstores, where a large proportion of sales are still made.

We asked authors to tell us which factors were important when publishing their books. We broke down the answers by aspiring vs. published authors (far right) and by type of published author (middle). The combined responses of all authors are on the left. More information on this topic is available here.

Written by Jeremy Greenfield, Forbes.com