Being a good writer doesn’t guarantee you will be a published author. Being a good writer doesn’t even mean that someone at a publishing house will consider your manuscript. Why? If the writing and story are good, shouldn’t a publisher consider the manuscript?
Other factors come into play for a publishing house – uniqueness of story, the risk of a new author, author’s platform (how the author can market their own book), etc.
One of the pitfalls of traditional publishing is that most first-time authors assume that the publishing house is going to do everything in its power to market the author’s book. Unfortunately, that isn’t always true. Of course, some marketing is set-up – think company website, monthly/quarterly catalog, and maybe even blog tours. But how many first time authors earn a big one page splash in the company catalog? Not very many.
Most publishing houses dump their marketing money into authors that are guaranteed to give them more dollars in the bank. Best-selling authors get the biggest portion of the company’s marketing department attention. First-time authors, and even those who have been published before but fall outside of the best-selling circle, find themselves contributing a large portion of their time and resources to the marketing of their own books.
With the changes taking place in large houses, the possibility of self-publishing is becoming more realistic to first-time and mid-level authors (those who have books under their belt but haven’t made it to the big time yet). Note: We’ve cautioned about self-publishing difficulties before – the things to stay away from, what to look for, etc. – to make sure that the author is getting the best deal.
Think about this scenario …
You choose to go the route of a traditional publisher and find an excellent literary agent who secures a book deal for you. Once the publishing house receives their portion of the sales and the literary agent is paid, suddenly you’re looking at 20% of sales. Since you’re a newbie, you need to invest a good portion of that money in marketing and promoting your book. By the time it’s all done, and you sit down and figure out what you made writing your book, it turns out you were writing for about $2 an hour. {All of the figures in this example are purely hypothetical and not meant to reflect the real world at all.}
Now, what if you went the route of self-publishing? Eliminate the publishing house cost and the literary agent cost. Add in a cost for an editor, printing of the book, and purchasing of ISBN. While those seem like “expensive” costs, they really aren’t. Depending on what route of self-publishing you take, sometimes those costs are included in a lump sum. So once your book is produced, the remainder of profit comes to you. Instead of getting 20% of the sales, you’re investing that 20% in the book production and receiving 80%. A portion of that 80% gets invested in marketing, and in return you were writing for $12 an hour instead of $2. {Again this is all hypothetical and no reflection on the real world or numbers you can expect.}
Hypothetical examples, but hopefully they give you some food for thought about the benefits of self-publishing. Realize it is not an easy route. It’s hard work to self-publish. You need to review contracts for each company and individual you work with. And the most important thing is that you retain the rights to your book. You have the freedom to create digital versions (another avenue for marketing), translate it to another language, sell it to a movie producer, etc. You are only bound by the terms that you set, not the terms that a publishing house sets.
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