Fellow NSA member and Facebook friend, Deborah Grayson Riegel, posted a question of whether she would self publish or traditionally publish her new book. She has published through both channels with different books she has written in the past.
I mentioned that it is harder and harder to justify traditional publishing, and there are new avenues and ways of publishing. I decided that instead of creating a giant Facebook reply, that I would just blog it.
1. Trad or Traditional Publishing
These are the big 5 publishers and all of their imprints:
Penguin/Random House
Harper Collins
Macmillan
Hachette
Simon and Schuster
These are the great monoliths of the book world, although some might see them as great dinosaurs. There are some advantages to using one of these titans such as the fact someone else is doing all of the steps of publishing your book. (minus marketing). There is some status and credibility of having your book published by a trad publisher, but there are a number of published authors leaving these great houses and plodding off to publish their future books on their own.
There is the mythic advance. These used to be a nice check that got you going and allowed you to eat while you finished your manuscript and the book began to sell. Not any more, as most advance checks are usually in the three or four digit range rather than a coveted five or six digit sum.
It is often who you know, not the merit of your book that will get it looked at by a publisher. I recently heard of an author offering a backstage entrance into trad publisher for his friends. While there is no guarantee that the book would be picked up, it does jump a lot of hoops that most other authors find frustrating or even impossible.
If you are not a celebrity, you should not even think of approaching a trad publisher without an agent. Some publishers will not even accept query letters that are not agented. Obtaining an agent is again who knows who game. It is very hard to secure one, and it can take months of hundreds of rejection letters to get one- "Yes I am interested, send me a proposal."
You have to know how to craft a great query letter, and proposal to have a fighting chance, and if you don't have the skills, you would do best to hire a professional to help you.
I work with speakers exclusively, and most of time they need their books available yesterday. Trad publishers have lead times to a book being in your hand from 12- 24 months. Can you wait that long?
Your royalties on a trad published book are a little sad. On an average priced book you may get around $2.00 per book. Granted, you MAY sell 20,000 books. But what if you don't? There is talk that trad publishing companies are beginning to ask for advance checks to be returned if the book does not sell well.
Imagining spending sleepless nights coming up with a cover design and title for your book, only for an editor to say, " We have decided to go a different direction..." The problem is, you have no control- you have signed over the rights of your book.
It's not always a bad idea- consider the fanfic piece called- Master of the Universe by Icequeen's Dragon.
A smart publisher changed it to- 50 Shades of Grey- by E L James (true story).
The other issue about the sales of your book is - what about your second book? If your sales are not where the publisher wants it to be- they will kill your book which essentially kills any further books you might want to publish.
In ANY of the publishing routes I want to stress that YOU will be doing a lion's share of the marketing. This takes time and money- so be prepared. Books don't sell themselves. If you do not have the skills- hire a good publicist and/or a marketer. Nothing worse than a great book that collects dust because there was no plan to sell it. Trad publishers look very closely to marketing plans in proposals.
2. Small Press
These are the little brothers and sisters of trad publishers, because their model is similar, but on a much smaller scale. Here is a link to an exhaustive list of small press publishers- https://www.pw.org/small_presses?page=6
The advantages here are that you can send direct submissions without the need of an agent.
Like a trad publisher- they do all the work concerning getting your book ready for print and do the printing for you. Some small press have advances, but these can be token in size. You still have the advantage of being published by a publisher- and hence the bragging rights.
Not only do you not need an agent- most agents will not submit to small press publishers- because they will not make the money they need out of a deal- which often comes from the advance check.
Like trad publishers, they can have a long lead time to print. In fact, many small press publishers only publish a few books a year and so the process can be even slower.
Again you do the marketing and there is little profit. You give up control the same as you do with trad publishers and you may get stuck in the same book two conundrum.
3. DIY ( True Self Publishing)
This is the DIY self publishing option. You can publish through many channels such as:
- Create Space
- Lightning Source
- Book Baby
- Smash Words
- Apple Istore
- Scribd
- Barnes and Nobel
- POD
- Book Printer
This is a huge step away from trad or small press publishing. You have total control of everything. You own the rights to your book.
The only thing stopping you from publishing your book is YOU. There is no real lead time- once you have the book ready to print, you submit it and it magically appears. You can even sell it through your own website.
You make changes and updates relatively easy. If you have you book in electronic form you can even publish it through Revizzit.com This site allows you make changes to all the electronic books you ever sold in real time.
The best thing about DIY publishing is that your profits can be in the 60%-70% range.
If you do not have the knowledge or skills to do DIY publishing this can be difficult and actually hurt your credibility. You are better off not publishing a book than to publish a poorly produced book. Publishing takes time and that can actually take away from your time actually writing your book. There are many mistakes that can be make along the road of publishing and some of them can be costly such as a poorly created cover or amateur book layout.
You will be paying for many of the services that a trad/small press would be paying for such as the cover, interior design and printing. Some believe that the DIY stigma is a thing of the past- and while it has been greatly reduced, the issue is that many self published books are done cheaply and it shows. It is more about the finished product than who published it that can really affect a author's credibility.
In the arena of professional reviews- it is much harder to get your book reviewed. Not impossible, but without knowledge in this area it can be very difficult and there are some avenues that you would need a good publicist.
4. Partner Publishing-Hybrid
Partner publishing is somewhere in between Trad and DIY. Some examples of partner publishers are:
- She Writes Press ( For Women only)
- Book Trope
- Wise Ink
- Ink Shares ( a Crowd Funding/Publisher)
- Turning Stone Press
- White Cloud Press
- Green leaf Publishing
- Estrucan Press
This type of publisher still has to accept your manuscript- however they offer all types of services such as editing, proofing, help with cover, and more. All of this has a price. It can vary and you may need to shop around a bit.
The good news is that you retain control over the rights to your book. They can provide you the expertise you need to create a professionally manufactured book- and they can produce your book quickly in most cases. This frees up your time to write.
One of things that Partner publishing does help with is distribution and marketing. These two things are HUGE if you want to sell your book for a passive book rather than just hawking them at events for back of the room sales. Remember, no matter what you will have to invest in your marketing.
One the flip side, there are no advances, you are paying for the services. These do save you time, and money in the long run and greatly increase your ability to create a great book on your own.
5. Assisted Publishing
This best describes my company Osiris Papers. This is a another step away from Partner closer to DIY, You have control over your book, you own the rights, and you do the tasks you wish to on your own. You hire professionals to do the tasks you feel would free up your time or in an area you have less skills in. Time until production is reduced, because many of the components are taken care of by professionals for you- IE. cover, interior design.
Since you have complete control over the process you can make changes easily.
This type of publishing like partner publishing does take budget, but you can decide what that is, because you can do some of the components yourself. You do have to manage the project to ensure the components are being completed.
If you decide to go this route- my advice is not to expect to pay 5 dollars to get a cover that knocks people socks off. You don't have to pay a fortune, but you don't want to use bargain basement providers.
No matter what- here are some essentials
- Edit, Edit , Edit
- Proof- this occurs after your editing, by a professional. You CANNOT proof your own book.
- Create a GREAT cover. In fact, put some ideas out to others to have them help you pick the best cover. (unless you create covers for a living- hire a professional. A graphic artist is not enough- you need someone who can create a great cover with an eye toward what sells.)
- Commit to the best book possible- NO SHORT CUTS. It must look and read in a way that moves people.
- Marketing starts today- take the time to create one the day you begin writing, and be ready to invest in YOU!
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