This post is part of the Publishing Resources Guide. Read more about Pre-Publication.
Contents:
Intro
The choice to publish a book through traditional channels or to do it yourself is a significant one. It will determine the type of marketing the book will get, how much money you will or won’t spend on the project, the amount of time you’ll invest (and the types of tasks you’ll be doing, because it’s a time investment no matter which path you choose), whether the book will stay in print or not, and potentially what formats the book will be available in. It will also determine how much control you’ll have over the project. With a traditional book deal you may have little to no control over any of the decisions that are made about the book and its publication.
It’s also important to remember that this isn’t always an either/or situation. You can publish some things traditionally and some things indie, as long as you don’t sign away your rights to do so. There are many people who publish short stories or novellas in magazines or anthologies and then publish the title themselves when the rights revert back to them. And still others who publish some novels traditionally and some Indie. Be careful with the contracts you sign and you can keep the option to do both if you wish.
Points to consider:
The contract and copyrights. The contract you’ll sign if you go traditional, and the implications of that contract on your control of the book’s copyright, are the biggest considerations in my book. Some publishing contracts require all rights to the book for the lifetime of the copyright. Other contracts only want first printing or reprinting rights, leaving you free to self publish on your own. You’ll have to determine what you’re comfortable signing. Make sure you’ve read my Understanding Copyrights and Contracts post before making a decision!
Royalty Rates. This is an offshoot of Contracts and Copyrights, but it’s the second biggest point. If you traditionally publish you’ll likely get around 10-15% per book sale, after you’ve met your advance and the book sells out – but then you have to give your agent 15% of your 10-15%, so you actually make less than that. If you self publish you’ll likely get around a 70% royalty for the sale of each eBook (depending on the platform and the price you choose). It’s different (usually less) for print and audio, but still likely more than a traditional contract. That’s a pretty significant amount, and it means that you’ll have to sell fewer copies to make the same amount (or even more) of money. Here’s a good article about royalty rates.
Your Publishing Output. Traditional contracts may place limits on your publication speed with that company, which limits the product you’ll have available to sell. Most publishers will publish only one book at a time by an author, and it can take up to 2 years for a book to get published. They may also put in non-compete clauses (which means you can’t sell books to a competing publisher), which further limit your output. More products = more chances to make money, so think carefully about any contract that limits your ability to publish as frequently as you want to. Closing the Deal on Your Terms is great to understand the ways publishers could limit your output.
The Content You Write. Understand that traditional publishers are making an investment in you and your book that they are going to want to get back as quickly as possible. The bigger your advance, the quicker they want their money back. They want books that will sell lots of copies out of the gate, and then that keep selling for years, ideally. But not every book does that. Some books sell a small amount of copies on launch, and then sell small amounts consistently every month for years. Over time that really adds up, but that’s not the path that traditional publishers are looking for. If you write quirky off-beat books, stories that don’t fit neatly into a specific genre, or stories that are in small niches, your books may not appeal to traditional publishers. Self publishing those titles may make more sense. Check out the article 1,000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly for more on that concept.
Getting Into Bookstores. A lot of people have the dream of seeing their books in bookstores, a dream I totally understand. I’d love to see mine there, too. What they may not know is that you can get your books into bookstores as an indie publisher – it just takes some work and know-how. Another thing people may not know: just because you traditionally publish doesn’t mean your book will show up on bookstore shelves for longer than a couple of months. If it shows up at all. Smaller publishers won’t necessarily guarantee your book will show up in retail stores. But if it does land on the shelves, it won’t stay there very long unless it sells a ton of copies. Bookstores have very limited space (especially when they give more and more space to toys and cards and journals and things other than books), so there’s frequent turnover of the books on the shelves. Unless your book is a bestseller, a classic, or in some way important to the bookstore (like regional titles) it’s not going to stay there long. Also, larger publishers pay for good placement of their most important titles (being displayed on front tables, or placed on the shelf with the cover facing out instead of spine out). Just because your book makes it into the store doesn’t mean they’ll pay for premium placement of the book. Don’t sign a bad book contract thinking it’s going to get your book in the bookstores for the rest of your life. It almost certainly won’t.
Getting into libraries. This is basically the same discussion as the bookstore points, just a little different. Just because a publisher could make your books available to libraries doesn’t mean they will. Likewise, just because a library can order your book doesn’t mean it will (that also applies to indie published titles). Publishers have been pricing their books extremely high, and even limiting the availability of their books to libraries. There have been a lot of tensions lately between publishers and libraries, so there are no guarantees your book will make it there. There’s an interesting article about it here: Bookstores and Libraries (Planning for 2019 Part 3). As an indie publisher, you can make your books available at a reasonable price. There is even a pay-per-checkout model which means a library can “list” your eBook and only pay for it when people check it out. The low price benefits libraries, the payment options benefit you, and greater book selection benefits readers. You’ve got great library options as an indie.
Selling children’s books. This market is different than all the others because you aren’t selling directly to the audience, you’re selling to their parents or grandparents or teachers or librarians. You’ll have to adjust your approach if you go indie. I suggest you search out interviews and podcasts with indie children’s book authors if that’s what you write (see The Creative Penn below – just search “children’s”). This will give you an idea of what’s required to be successful at it.
Winning Awards. Historically the major book awards have not allowed self published titles at all, so there was no chance your book would be recognized by anyone in the industry if you self published. The option was simply off the table, regardless of how good your book was. The general belief was that if your book was any good it would have made it in traditional publishing, so by virtue of being self published it was automatically no good. This is slowly changing, but not universally. There are genres which still deliberately exclude self published titles. If awards and accolades are important to you then do your research to see if it’s possible to win in your genre as an indie publisher.
Marketing. New writers often don’t have a full grasp of what marketing entails. People think buying ads is all there is to it, but the truth is that everything you do as a publisher is marketing. The book’s cover, title, back cover copy, sales description, and price are all marketing. The keywords and metadata you use are marketing. Even your publishing name is marketing. Self publishers routinely change all of these things until they find what works for the book, and then they do it all again a few years down the line when the market has changed. This is how you keep your backlist refreshed and selling. One (currently) foundational aspect of indie book marketing is playing with pricing on the first book in a series, either making the book permanently free or running periodic sales on the book. If you traditionally publish there’s a very high likelihood that you won’t be able to change these things at all, which limits your options. There are also the bookstore placement options that I mentioned above, which are also marketing. A traditional publisher may or may not optimize those for you. They may or may not take out ads for your book, or arrange signings or con appearances. It all depends on your contract, and how much they think your book will sell.
Your Time Investment. This is a critical component of the decision. When you get a book published, regardless of the path, you’re going to invest a significant amount of time to the project. If you go traditional you’ll spend time finding an agent, then finding a publishing house to publish the book, then editing the book, and then marketing the book once it’s released (and yes, traditional publishers expect you to market the book). This could take years, and there’s no guarantee a book will sell. If you go indie, you’ll spend time getting the book edited, a cover made, figuring out the whole publication process, and then marketing the book (although you get to choose how much time and money you invest in that, if any at all). This will take a chunk of time – it’s not rocket science and you can learn it, but you’ll invest time to do so. Though it will likely be less time than the traditional route (possibly significantly less time). Also, once you’ve figured out the publication process, publishing a book gets a lot quicker and easier. So don’t let the upfront time investment scare you off.
But understand: once you self publish you become the publisher. You assume all the tasks of running a business the publisher would, and all the upfront costs. You’re still running a business if you traditionally publish, but you won’t have as many details to juggle and you won’t be putting out any financial investment. So if you’re not a Do It Yourself kind of person, or someone who cares about controlling the project start to finish, or someone who wants to tinker around with different marketing or publishing opportunities, then the Indie route may not be for you. Personally, I get excited about all the ways I can tinker with my books, and the many different publishing routes for Indie publishers. But not everyone does. Even if you’re anxious about learning it all, consider reading about it before you write it off. I try to share ways throughout this guide to make the process as streamlined and low-key as possible. Because as much as I love digging into all the many details, I’ve learned a few things: 1. You can’t let anything get in the way of your writing time, not even marketing. And 2. You can’t let writing and publishing take over your life. You have to have time off, and time with your family. So throughout this guide I’ll do my best to present the material in as much detail as I can so you can see all the many options out there, but also to show ways that writers can limit and minimize the time spent on marketing and admin tasks to focus on writing and also keep a work/life balance. But if you just aren’t interested or able to invest the time to learn, then traditional may be the way for you.
Alternately, you could hire someone to publish the book for you. There are virtual assistants or other folks who have experience with self publishing who will get the book published for you, but who won’t retain any of the copyright. They are work for hire that treat the book creation and launch as a freelance project to complete. This gives you the best of both worlds: you don’t have to learn the process from scratch, but you retain all copyright and royalties for the book. You will pay for this process, though, so be prepared for that.
Your financial investment. The upfront costs of publishing a book yourself is a major deterrent to some, and I understand. Many of us are on a tight budget for our “regular lives,” and throwing in the cost of a book publication could put us over the edge. Especially when you start hearing that you need to spend thousands on a developmental editor, a line editor, and a proofreader, and a custom cover, and a big marketing push and so on and so on. When you traditionally publish it becomes the publisher’s upfront cost to finance the book, not yours, and that can seem like a major deal. But the thing is, you don’t have to spend thousands to publish a book, and you’ll get to decide what’s worth investing in for you. You get the final say. I’ll point out ways to minimize your publication costs throughout this guide.
Lately I’m even seeing the advice that writers should pay from their own pockets to have the book edited BEFORE they even send it out to agents and editors. If you’re going to go to that expense and trouble before you even get published, what do you need a publisher for? That’s a service the publisher should provide as part of the reason they are taking royalties from you. I suggest you don’t do their job for them and still pay them “full price” in terms of the royalties you give them.
Think of it this way: publication costs are basically a one-time expense. Generally publishers will edit, cover and format the book once and never do those things again unless the book sells so amazingly well that they decide to keep refreshing the cover over the years (spoiler: that’s not most books). They do the initial work once and almost never revisit it again. After that they occasionally do another print run and manage sending inventory out to bookstores. That takes some effort, but is it worth 90% of the royalties?
If a book is published as print-on-demand (POD) then there isn’t even a need for ongoing management of printing and shipping books over the years. So that’s a task that traditional publishers take on that’s actually unnecessary work for the majority of books. If a book is selling like hotcakes then it makes sense to do a print run, because the per-book printing price will always be lower with a large print run than with POD. But if a book is selling as a slower pace then spending the time and upfront costs on print runs doesn’t make sense. Why hire someone to do a task for you that actually doesn’t make sense to do for most books?
Remember, they usually won’t market your backlist titles unless you hit the writer jackpot and suddenly have a book go viral on TikTok or something, so it’s not like they’re constantly investing large amounts of time in the book over the years. And they may not even decide to run new print runs of the paper books if sales are lower than what they want, and if they don’t do Print-on-Demand your paper format is now out of print. Think about how many older titles you’ve gotten interested in and gone looking for, only to be unable to find them. How many more have gone out of print that you don’t even know about? If you have an exit strategy in your contract you can get out of it when the publisher goes under, or the book goes out of print, and you can get it republished. If you don’t, it’s gone forever.
This is how I think of it: at best, publishing is a 50/50 split. You spend a portion of time and money writing and marketing the book, and the publisher spends a portion of time and money managing the editing, publication, and distribution of the book, with possibly some marketing thrown in there. So writer and publisher both have an initial investment that’s probably equal in time and/or money expense, and ongoing tasks that are probably equal in time and/or money. So why give them roughly 90% of the book’s royalties for the rest of your life for work that they did once and you can do yourself (editing and publication and launch marketing), or for maintenance type work (printing and distributing) that is matched by your ongoing marketing efforts? That’s like doing a startup with someone who will provide the funding and a little bit of work and you’ll do the lion’s share of the work, but then they want to keep 90% of the profits for themselves for the rest of your lives because they provided the initial funds. Signing a bad contract means you may not have any upfront costs, but you’ll pay far more over the rest of your life than you would if you just saved up enough to publish the book yourself.
Remember that time is money. If you spend all your time on tasks that don’t yield you a financial profit you can’t pay your bills. You don’t have infinite amounts of time to write books that won’t earn you a living down the line. Also, you shouldn’t get the short end of the publishing stick because they invested money in the project but “all” you invested was time in writing the book. Your time and creativity has value, so don’t give it away. Without you, publishing houses cease to exist. You have options, so they need you more than you need them (even if it doesn’t always feel that way). Educate yourself, and negotiate from a place of power.
Final Analysis
So here’s my final analysis of the question of how to publish:
First: decide what your goal is for the book.
- If you’re looking to win literary awards, or get prime placement on the front table of Barnes & Noble, or have a massive launch that includes tv interviews and ads in magazines and a public book tour then go traditional. If you go traditional then make sure it’s because they can do something for you that you can’t do for yourself, and get whatever that is written into the contract so it’s protected. Make sure you have an exit strategy if they don’t live up to their word.
- If you’re publishing a non-fiction book where going with a specific publisher that specializes in your topic would add prestige and validation to your words then go with that publisher.
- If you can’t or don’t want to learn the process then go traditional or hire someone to publish the book for you.
- If you want to build your book catalogue as quickly as possible and retain as much of your royalties and creative control as possible then self publish.
Second: learn everything you can about your chosen path so you can make informed decisions. Know what you will and won’t accept in a traditional publishing contract, or from a service provider.
Third: retain as much copyright as possible. Don’t sign any contracts that limit your choices for future book launches. Negotiate so you can get the best possible deal for each book that you can.
Resources
All of that is a lot to chew on. Some of it is my opinion after the research I’ve done, which may differ from other people’s opinions. You’ve got to decide what is right for you based on your own research. I’ve got some resources to help you make a decision:
1,000 True Fans. This article basically wraps up the philosophy behind indie publishing in a nutshell: eliminating the middle man and selling direct to your fans, having as large a book catalogue as you can get, and the benefits of niche books.
Closing the Deal on Your Terms. An excellent overview of the traditional publishing process.
Pros and Cons of Traditional vs. Self Publishing by Joanna Penn. An overview of your two options.
Self-Publishing and Independent Authors FAQ by The Alliance for Independent Authors
How to Self-Publish – Tales from Both Sides of the Fence by A.C. Melody. A great look at what traditional publishers provide vs. what you can do for yourself. In this case she looks at eBook-only publishers.
The Ditch Diggers Podcast. This is run by Mur Lafferty and Matt Wallace, two well-awarded professional writers who dig into the business of being a traditionally published author. They’ll give you a great look into being traditionally published. Try to start at the beginning if you can, I think they cover more basic concepts at the beginning.
The Creative Penn Podcast. This is Joanna Penn’s podcast where she interviews a phenomenal number of authors about their publishing journey. Search the page for the terms “hybrid” and “traditional” to find authors who have traditionally published. Listening to them will give you a wide range of experiences going the trad route, from good to bad. It may help you make a decision. Note: all of her podcasts are transcribed, in case you prefer to read them. Some good episodes:
#636 Writing a Bestseller with A.G. Riddle
#329 How to Write Fast, Publish Slow, and Focus on Your Author Marketing with Rachel Aaron
Basically you have to decide for yourself where you want to invest your time, what you’re willing to accept in a publishing contract, and what you’re willing to spend in the process. These resources will help guide you.
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