Publishing your book yourself makes sense for a number of reasons. Foremost, with the advent of digital printing, a small number of books, say 50 or 100, can be printed at an unbelievably low cost per copy. Previously, litho printing was the only option, which now becomes cost effective only at runs of around 1 000 copies or more. 

Also, if you choose to self publish, you retain all rights as well as editorial control over your work, and you needn’t hand licensing rights and a large percentage of your profits to publishing houses, which, in South Africa’s small market, “rely heavily on authors to market their own work” anyway, to quote an acquaintance who is an executive at a large Cape Town publisher.

Self publishing also suits niche writers, people who write their family memoirs, for instance, or poets and authors of spiritual books. Such books can be edited and designed beautifully, inexpensively printed in small quantities and distributed to friends and within appropriate circles.