It is relatively easy to self-publish. You don’t have to spend much money at all. That said, most authors don’t know how to publish, what’s involved, and what they’re missing. It’s the old adage “You don’t know what you don’t know.” Most self-published books fail because they are editorially and aesthetically below par. We ensure that every book published on the SWP or SP label is up to a certain industry standard, and no book put out on our imprint will suffer the feedback of being poorly published. Brooke Warner has made author education an integral part of the experience at She Writes Press and SparkPress. She holds a monthly call for authors in which she details all the steps of the publishing process and explains to authors what they need to be considering as they move forward toward publication. Also, self-publishing is a lonely endeavor, and many self-published authors don’t have the community or existing platform they need to be able to sell books. Authors also take advantage of the collective experience of those authors who’ve come before them, many of whom are active on the SWP and SP Secret groups on Facebook, as well as on SheWrites.com. We give authors the benefit of publishing on a brand that already has a solid reputation in the industry, and the added benefit of traditional distribution via Simon & Schuster.