DWS: The Real Price of Traditional Publishing...

[MWagner]

I'm wary of self-publishing because its more zealous proponents don't acknowledge that it isn't necessarily the way for all writers to go. Personally, I'm not interested in quitting my day job and taking a pay cut to grind out 3-4 novels a year for a niche genre audience, while taking on a bunch of tasks and roles I have absolutely no interest in. If that works for other writers, all the power to them.

 

[Gary Compton]

I was being a little tongue in cheek. but he still glosses over a lot of the costs of sp and makes it seem easy to reach an amount that doesn't reflect reality - the published author will not have had to pay for editing, cover design. As a basic cost I would put that at about £500 - £300 for editing, £200 for cover - and that's very conservative. Which means you're really having to hit 200 copies - based on his cover price - realistically, as a debut, you might have to drop that price to shift volume - to see a profit of any kind. And most sp books don't sell 200 copies. So, yes, I think he was painting it as a more simplistic picture than it was.

(But hey, never the twain, and all that there... )

And thank you! Musing on prices etc here.

More like £500 for a decent edit from a pro, £100-£200 for copy-edit, £200 for a cover, £50 for formatting, £50 for paperback setup and ISBN's and other little hidden gems!

Self-pub away!

 

[Denise Tanaka]

trad publishing opens doors, especially for a debut.

We're talking about a large group of writers who cannot get into trad publishing contracts, or have been pushed out because they're not profitable enough for the multi-national corporations that own the big publishers.

Aside from the discussion of costs and sales figures, I see a real shift in the public attitude about self-publishing. It's starting to shift, I should say, because we're still in a period of flux. As Jo pointed out, there is still quite a bit of.... I don't know, snobbery? Self-pubs are working hard to shake off the image of a loser with a photocopy machine. These days, a lot of self-pubs and small presses are producing books of the same quality as the traditional houses, but they don't have the same prestige in society.

A big name publisher may not do anything else for you, in terms of marketing or sales, but it guarantees your book will have a label with brand name recognition. It's the reason why some small business owners start out managing a franchise instead of opening their own restaurant. You get the backing and the brand label of a McDonald's instead of making your own recipe for hamburgers. McDonald's gives you the pre-packaged food so you can hire less skilled cooks to heat it up instead of hiring your own master chef. Unfortunately, it's easier to invest in managing a McDonald's than it is to get a debut manuscript by an unknown writer accepted by Harper-Collins!

 

[MWagner]

A big name publisher may not do anything else for you, in terms of marketing or sales, but it guarantees your book will have a label with brand name recognition.

As a reader, it also guarantees that an experienced professional who goes through thousands of manuscripts a year liked it enough to pull it out of the slush pile. Some people find that kind of quality control elitist. But it has practical value for readers who don't want to do that sifting through thousands of books themselves.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Just to return to this - if self-publishing is so superior to traditional publishing, then why do the stars of self-publishing tend to sign up with full traditional publishing contracts?

Hugh Howey - self-published Wool, signed fully with Random House for Sand
J Michael Sullivan - self-published Riyria, now also signed with Random House
Amanda Hocking - signed up with Tor

In each instance, they are only hybrid publishing by way of retaining ebook publishing rights over their original self-published titles - later titles appear to be full traditional contracts.

The argument that self-pubbed is superior to traditional pubbed is often rooted in the fact that the author retains the largest share of royalties - so what incentive did the above three have to accept a lower share of their own royalties?

Clearly the argument isn't entirely clear cut - John Locke (like Howey and Hocking is another of Amazon's Kindle Million Club) has decided to keep to self-publishing, so he still sees some advantage to doing so - whereas others in the same club have not.

Btw, I'm not trying to kick self-publishing as an option - I am trying to tone the arguments into facts, as opposed to rhetoric - so that we have a realistic understanding of what self-publishing is, does, and might achieve.

 

[Boneman]

And Anthony Ryan. Blood Song (Book 1 of his Ravens Shadow trilogy, which is absolutely brilliant) started life as a self-published book. He says this in answer to the question 'why did you decide to sign with a traditional publisher after originally self-publishing?'

"Simply put, I weighed up the pros and cons and decided it was the best decision for me. Although I think self-publishing is a great thing and continue to self-publish my Slab City Blues Sci-fi novellas, I wanted the Ravens Shadow trilogy to have the widest possible audience, including foreign sales* and access to bookshops. A traditional publishing deal still seems the best way of achieving that."

*I guess unless you can translate your own self-pubbed book, you're stuck with the one language you write it in. I saw recently that Patrick Rothfuss has been translated into 20 different languages = something nigh-on impossible for a self-pubbed, except at enormous cost.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I don't think there's any argument that once you reach a certain level, trad is the only viable model. The exposure, bookstore coverage and support must outweigh any other arguments? The question is about what path to take to superstardom.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I don't think there's any argument that once you reach a certain level, trad is the only viable model.

I think that argument was being made in the link from the original post by Dean Wesley Smith.

EDIT: Though obviously he's arguing that self-pub works well for him. As a prolific writer with many books out of print, perhaps that's understandable. What would be more interesting now would be to see whether the issue of signing with a 75-year copyright really is a disadvantage. Before ebooks, without that, it meant your books could go out of print - and stay out of print, because previous physical sales were unlikely to entice a publisher to reprint. Now with ebooks, those same stories can remain in print and available to buyers. Is that really a disadvantage?

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Superstardom is over-rated.

 

[Wo7f]

I know a few authors who have went the traditional route, only to be relieved to go SP for their next book. The horror stories I've heard. One of the reasons I decided on SP was because of "Let's Get Digital" by David (forgot last name) he has the same views. Although David's literature is a few years old, it still rings true for me. And this "Life of the Copyright" is something I've never heard of and am grateful for the insight. Thank you Fishbowl for the link. I felt it was an eye opener for me and takes away any doubt that I chose the right route.

 

[tinkerdan]

I felt the point he has making was that for a first time author debut novel SP could look more appealing.

The reasons for this were heavily into the contract obligations and the fact that debut novels rarely garner the author any more money than the advance. And because of low sales those novels become ghosts within the realm of the copies in circulation while the novel is shelved and unsold copies destroyed. (This changes a bit with the electronic copies; but only as regards the publishers take on what to do with those electronic copies. They could withdraw them because they belong to them.)

So, your baby, if you chose to call it that will net you the initial check whatever it was and will only see the light of day after a set period if the publisher decides to leave it in the electronic offerings. In the past with no electronic books the book just quietly disappears.

This is all decided by the publisher who now owns the book.

The appealing thing about SP is that you own the book and you decide what to do with it.

No promise that it will make you any money or make you rich, but it remains as your asset rather than something that belongs to the publisher for the next 70 years.

The other point being made was that the contracts are getting more egregious; an instance of this would be limiting the authors right to write within their own universe for anyone except the publisher holding the contract and it would be up to the publisher to decide if another publisher would be allowed to publish your new book in the same universe. And you as the author have to ask permission even to self publish in that universe.

So I think that this is nothing about making more money or having great advantage as much as it is a caution that you are giving up a lot of rights to the publisher whether it succeeds or not for that publisher and putting a lot of faith into that publisher to chose whats best for you over whats best for the publishing house.