Publishers or People?

Getting it in BAM and B&N is less important than getting it on Amazon. And when it's on Amazon, people don't really notice if it bears the name of a major publishing house or not.

But how many books are there on Amazon? No one is going to just stumble across it, and if they do, the odds that they're willing to pay the cost of a print book plus shipping and then wait for it are extremely slim (also, who's doing the shipping? Don't forget that once you self-publish, you're making yourself a small-business owner, with all the responsibilities that entails). Amazon doesn't care whether you move your merch or not, whereas once your book hits shelves, a bookstore has a vested interest in selling it as quickly as possible.

Your repeated use of "major publishing house" also strikes me as odd; while there are several mammoth ones, there are also about a billion tiny publishers that publish around 4-6 books a year, often on specific topics (for instance, Dawn Publications publishes children's books about nature). These are generally a writer's best bet.

How many books are in a print store? And what are the odds that your book will be in most print stores, when they could buy a more famous book to put in that limited space instead? You have to do your own marketing however your book's published.

Note that I haven't said "self-publishing;" I've actually been talking about independent publishers. Some of them basically amount to self-publishing where they do all the actual printing and stuff for you.

edited 13th Feb '12 12:50:59 PM by INUH

Publishers are spending time and money on getting you published; they won't bother doing so unless they're pretty confident they can sell your books. Ergo if they publish you, the odds are good that most of your books are going to move, and even if they don't, you'll still get an advance (which is basically their guarantee of good faith: "We are sure enough that we'll sell 1/3 of your books that we'll pay you for them now").

In contrast, it's extremely possible to self-publish a book and never sell a single copy. There's a reason a self-published author selling a bunch of books is a newsworthy success story, while a traditionally published author selling a bunch of books is business as usual. (Also, most cases either a. spent huge amounts of money pimping their stuff, b. got picked up by a traditional publisher, or c. are ebooks, which is not what we're talking about. Or all three.)

Oooookay, so you're using that term to mean something totally different than its generally-established meaning of "the publication of any book or other media by the author of the work, without the involvement of an established third-party publisher."

Well, you know, it's typically not a choice between publishers and self-publishing.

If a publisher is willing to pick you up, they're going to a do minimum sale of at least a hundred thousand copies. Independent publishers are equivalent to self-publishing, so that's pretty worthless to go with.

As far as royalties go:

• Self Publishing Print: 30%
• Self Publishing Digital: 70%
• Publisher Deal: I've not seen anything greater than a few percent for low-volume sales, and for high-volume drops to a percent or less

But as I said, it's generally not a choice. If you can get yourself a publisher deal it means they think your book can sell 100k copies at the least, and that means you've already broken through the market. For everyone else, they don't get a publisher deal so you only have one choice; self-publish.

Mm. I personally plan to go after E-publishing.

Of course, money, and the making of money, really isn't relevant to me.

I think you've all managed to wander off the point INUH was trying to make, which is that publishers are not designed or equipped or interested in actually helping you get a publishable book. They don't have to be. (If for no other reason than the number of submitted works means they will acquire material that is publishable without effort on their part via the Law of Large Numbers.) They're long on form letters. It's all the effort they have to expend to continue in the fashion they're working.

And as a business, their interest is in getting maximum money with minimum effort.

A bit off-topic here, but I've always held a great deal of respect and admiration for the small press and its resilience. Granted, part of this comes from being a literary horror fanatic and a book collector to boot, but it's also just something more general: There is something, I feel, oddly noble about soldiering on in producing the product that you want to produce in the way that you want to produce it, regardless of the hell that may come upon you financially.

(Though swanky limited editions by cult authors always do well, and if you're a trusted enough outfit, there will always be a market for your books, regardless of how well-known the author is in their own right.)

I'd personally would rather go with the publishers, because they are the experts in selling a product. (like a novel)

Not to mention they have a slew of editors, copy editors, and other professionals who are there to take care of the work that would tear me away from writing the damn story.

In short, time management.

edited 13th Feb '12 3:50:09 PM by EldritchBlueRose

When you self-publish, you contract out the work of editing, title making and advertising. The difference is that you pay out of your own pocket versus the publisher taking a significant portion of your royalties to pay for that process. Ironically, if you're already famous enough, you really don't need publishers any more and can do it yourself again, so it's this weird curve of needing publishers these days.