Someone pointed me at a publisher who bill themselves as a Boutique publisher. They don't seem to want money from me but seem to publish books that have limited appeal. Ill see if I can find it again and post the URL if that is allowed.
Well, in the end in comes down to that marketing/advertising potential. And today a self-published writer has much more options, especially with the rise of the internet. In fact, it's the internet that has driven self-publishing in the last 5-10 years. Just take YouTube for example. Some users have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of subscribers. People who own websites can have incredible traffic, even the owner of this site for example. That person sticking an advert for his book up on his e-world can get massive exposure very quickly. All I'm saying is that, today, the resources for mass advertising are there, and it just takes a clever business person with imagination to exploit it. And of course there's always traditional methods to supplement. Of course as I've said though, this whole route means becoming entrepreneur/author. Money flowing away from an entrepreneur is perfectly normal, as is having to advertise yourself and find ways to make your book sell. For the "dude, I just want to be a writer" person traditional publishing is always the way because that's all you have to be, but depending on the individual self-publishing can be a better option, because the control is absolutely necessary. As I said, this is basically how John Locke hit one million; by treating the whole process as a business, playing the market and undercutting with his price. From what I've read of reviews he's not exactly an exceptional writer either.
I think that's one thing that has bothered me about the 'new breed' of self-publishers, or at least the more visible proponents. It seems as though the emphasis is on the business end of things, versus the craft side. I don't know, maybe they're assuming that the 'honing your craft' is understood, but it doesn't get much mention. It just seems like it's all about marketing and manipulation, how to get people to buy the 'product'. It's like the writing is secondary - get some words down and get it out there, start marketing, media, pricing - then QUICK! - get some more words down and build on the first 'product'... But maybe that's why I haven't gotten that interested in self-publishing, except perhaps for some short stories. Not only because I don't want to be a publisher, but also because I just wouldn't want to get into that mindset. As you say, for some people it's the right road. For others, commercial publishing is the better fit. Each has its own set of difficulties and rewards.
No serious publisher would make you pay to publish your novel. i doubt it that many of the self publishing writers have the necessary skills to be writer, editor, publisher, handle the marketing of the novel and all the other professions involved in the process. basically it takes a whole bunch of skills in order to make it profitable. that is, I guess, the reason why so many fail when they decide to go their own way and publish it themselves.
Yes, that appears to be exactly what they are. This particular publisher seems to concentrate on non-fiction. Most of their titles seem to be minor sportsmen, people who have had a long crawl back after a major accident and that sort of thing. They seem to be a "traditional" publisher in that they don't ask for any money. It's moot as my stuff is all fiction. Several of their titles have gotten national press. One, the autobiography of a woman who was affected by the Thalidamide thing back in the early sixties, was on the premier national chat show the other night. Seems like a good way to go for this sort of book.
I suspect that the premise of the poster you're responding to is that the author is the originator of all revenue from the novel, and that therefore any share that the publisher takes is him "paying" them for their services. I don't think he's talking about the author literally writing a check to the publisher. I don't agree with that view, I'm just providing my interpretation of that post.
that should be amended to: 'no legitimate traditional [= paying] publisher would make you pay to publish your novel'... because those oodles of vanity presses, pod's, e-publishers, et al. out there are all deadly serious about making you pay them to put you novel in book form!
I must have missed such a pitch. Although, granted I had moved onto other things. Personally I am not so invested on either side here. As it's of course ridiculous to say that self-publishing is some kind of gold mine for anyone and everyone(but I had the understanding that no one was making such a claim here, I certainly did not), but it's just as painfully clear that it is wrong to say self-publishing is some sort of awful taint to one's career. If you look into many who have done it and became wildly successful and the way many more are beginning to do it now for even more reasons, also with success, or even at the idea as it stands on its own, the notion that doing similar would be reason enough to negate that person's ability, is lacking such a basic level of recognition that most likely makes them incapable of writing anything worth reading themselves. Attempting to counter their type of argument, however, is probably as worthwhile as doing so with those of creationists, those who believe the rapture is near, or anybody besides the very wealthy who insist on consistently voting Republican. (There is of course considerable overlap there ). Therefore I will again try to resist temptation to engage in "debates" such as that, as opposition, especially the credible type, only ignorantly strengthens their misguided certitude and the hypocrisy of their criticisms. P.S. Just to be clear, I am not saying that you are one to make either type of claim. Just making my position clear.
i self published, and my book printed exactly like i wanted it to (without editors screwing it up)-- and it's a definite success. http://www.jonathan-maxwell.com/cards-reviews one of the few nice things about getting older is that you care less and less about what others think of you. life really is short, you will not have time to write all you want. do what you need to do in whatever way you can.
Congratulations! Well done. Did you do a lot of promotion yourself? It might be a very good way to go for a special interest subject like poker. I'm guessing there is a ready made cult you could tap into to market it. Was that the case?
by 'definite success' do you mean it's selling well and you've made a pile of money on it? if so, how did you market it so successfully?
I thought this might be interesting and relevant to the discussion: Marc Gascoigne is the editor of Angry Robot books, a major new SF publisher, and Maura McHugh is a writer/editor. Gascoigne says that his publishing house would not pick up a story which has already been published as an ebook. I don't know how that affects everyone else, but it puts me off self-publishing quite a bit.
1) Self-publishing does not equal ebook publishing 2) Stephen King, Dean Koontz, all of John Grisham's 23 best sellers are available on ebooks. 3) I believe that publisher is just referring to an "already" published piece and not desiring to publish it again. Sorry for not being more detailed this time. I was in first attempt to post, but my connection with the site seemed to just lock up when I went to post. Anyway, I hope you see some differences from what you might have thought in your post to the reality of the situation. Thus most likely drawing a different conclusion.
I didn't say it was. My point was aimed more at the "Oh, well if it does well self-published on Amazon (for example) a traditional publisher will pick it up" argument which seems to run under a lot of people's interest in self-publishing. I wasn't using it as a general argument against self-publishing per se, but more as caution as to first rights, and the unlikelihood of an e-self-published book being picked up.
Wow, I didn't think this thread would get so much attention. However, after giving this more thought, I feel foolish for even bringing up this question. As many have mentioned, many authors are going to self-publishing because a publisher doesn't offer much to an already-established author. That doesn't really correlate to me at all since I'm not established, though. It seems pretty silly to be worried about the distant future when it's impossible to predict. However, I think it's clear that the importance of publishers is already on the decline. Already, there are several mega-popular books on Amazon that are self-published. In fact, at one point a few months ago, several of the top ten Kindle sales went to unpublished authors. I doubt that anything equivalent to that had happened 30 years prior. In my case, though, I want to publish a short novella/long short story. After finding out that Ender's Game was originally a short story that could hardly be considered published, I looked into this more. Quite a few popular books have followed this same route; however, Ender's Game seems to be the most popular that I was able to find. A lot of people are defending publishers and I think everyone is aware how helpful getting published by a reputable publisher can be. But, too many people seem to have the position that self-publishing is surefire path to failure. A lot of people aren't attempting to make a living as an author, though--myself included. So, if all I want to do is make a story available, how can self-publishing fail to do that? I'm not aspiring to be the next Rick Riordan so, if I don't (which is obviously ridiculously probable), how have I failed? Additionally, if an agent considers a poorly written short story self-published by an author years and years ago to hold any significance to that author's ability to write a novel today, that agent is incompetent. Countless authors that write short stories say they wouldn't be able to write a good novel and countless novelists say they wouldn't be able to write a good short story. Finally, as someone else mentioned, life is too short to worry about the distant future; it really is. I've decided that I'm going to self-publish. I'll make a thread of the forums when I do and update as time passes in case anyone is interested on how it goes.
"Self-publishing does not equal ebook publishing" Okay. You did list a quote about some publisher's lack of desire in picking up an already published ebook, and that that puts you "off self-publishing quite a bit". I interpreted your post the best I could. About the second part, I did not know that was motivation for many/any who self-publish. But why would that turn you off of it? Were you thinking of publishing a certain piece of work, only to then market that same piece to a traditional publisher? I was under the impression this thread was about the question "Does self-publishing damage your reputation?" which is another reason I went in the direction of interpreting your post the way I did. For example, listing a few of the definite successes who have published and will continue publishing ebooks, and earlier listing some who have been very successful through self-publishing. Good examples why doing either would not/should not hurt or help one's reputation as a writer. Just as what each is, should not either. Many talented and successful writers have chosen and many more are choosing to enter into both fields, as that is the way the industry is heading. Just as a side note since you brought it up, its got me thinking about it . . . since the best numbers available still imply that between 70 and 80% of fictional books are still being bought via the physical type, that if one did have a very successful ebook that was not published in hardcopy, why would a publisher not take it on. An exaggerated example of this would be, hypothetically if for whatever reason Grisham put out his next novel in ebook first on his own, then offered up the rights to the physical version, wouldn't the traditional publishers(even this SF one) want in on the 70-80% of the overall sales that would bring? Is there a problem with that that I am not seeing? (probably is since now I am just ad libbing with this topic now). Besides the fact that the overall profit for the publisher would be diminished with an already existing ebook that they do not share in, and thus he would not get as much from them, wouldn't it still be a very suitable proposition financially from both? This is hypothetical as I know that this is not what happens.
Originally posted by Cuzzo - "Wow, I didn't think this thread would get so much attention. However, after giving this more thought, I feel foolish for even bringing up this question. As many have mentioned, many authors are going to self-publishing because a publisher doesn't offer much to an already-established author. That doesn't really correlate to me at all since I'm not established, though. It seems pretty silly to be worried about the distant future when it's impossible to predict. However, I think it's clear that the importance of publishers is already on the decline. Already, there are several mega-popular books on Amazon that are self-published. In fact, at one point a few months ago, several of the top ten Kindle sales went to unpublished authors. I doubt that anything equivalent to that had happened 30 years prior. In my case, though, I want to publish a short novella/long short story. After finding out that Ender's Game was originally a short story that could hardly be considered published, I looked into this more. Quite a few popular books have followed this same route; however, Ender's Game seems to be the most popular that I was able to find. A lot of people are defending publishers and I think everyone is aware how helpful getting published by a reputable publisher can be. But, too many people seem to have the position that self-publishing is surefire path to failure. A lot of people aren't attempting to make a living as an author, though--myself included. So, if all I want to do is make a story available, how can self-publishing fail to do that? I'm not aspiring to be the next Rick Riordan so, if I don't (which is obviously ridiculously probable), how have I failed? Additionally, if an agent considers a poorly written short story self-published by an author years and years ago to hold any significance to that author's ability to write a novel today, that agent is incompetent. Countless authors that write short stories say they wouldn't be able to write a good novel and countless novelists say they wouldn't be able to write a good short story. Finally, as someone else mentioned, life is too short to worry about the distant future; it really is. I've decided that I'm going to self-publish. I'll make a thread of the forums when I do and update as time passes in case anyone is interested on how it goes." Often these threads branch of into larger issues besides the use the poster intended it for. Glad to see you saw the obvious merits and faults of certain arguments correctly. However, obviously the success of a book is not determined by the avenue it's published in. Promoting a book and the popularity of its content are both correlate to its eventual sales, but more importantly the key to a good book is the quality of it, regardless of self-published or not. Good luck on whatever you do.
There are self-published books as good or better than books published by traditional publishers. These are the exception. The vast majority of self-published works are self-published because they are not good enough to be published by traditional publishers. Readers know it. Publishers know it. And I suspect most of the authors themselves know it. If you go the self-pubilshing route you are not doing yourself any favors by pretending that this is not the reality in the market.
I disagree that that is the reason many/most people self-publish, especially now. However, I agree that the average quality of self-published books out there in theory would be of lesser literary quality, since nearly anyone with a bit of money can choose to publish. So there is probably tons of garbage out there. (Although there is in both fields. Just technically more in the self-published field. So what?) As far as readers know, I mean if I was to buy an ebook I wouldn't know if it's self-published or not. Or for that matter if I bought a book in a bookstore that isn't from one of the bigger publishing houses I wouldn't know either. And I for one when I go to buy a book, the first thing I do isn't to look quickly to how or where it was published. On the flip side, when I go to a bookstore and randomly see what's there, there's a lot of garbage too. From those of celebrity nature like Paris Hilton, Kardashians, Denis Leary and many more celebrities or even those who become celebrities from odd natured books/tv shows. I do believe the book Leary had that reached top 5 on the Times Best Sellers list was of celebrity tweets that he had compiled. Ouch. But even besides celebs, there are many more non-celeb books in the nature of trashy romance novels, those in the flavor of the month genres like zombies or vampires that are just rushed attempts to cash in on a recent trend, and many others, that are also of very low literary quality. Just poor overall, in nature and in content. It does reason that the amount of low quality books is higher in the unpublished field, for sure. For whatever that's worth. Basically like we've said, it'd be stupid to say a book is good merely because it got published traditionally(if you think otherwise, take a more thorough look next time you go to a bookstore) the same as if you said a book was bad because it was self-published. Although if one was stupid and lazy enough and had to bet which was better without opening a single page, go with the traditionally published. In reality, the actual quality still comes down to the work. To me it's clear that good books are the exception in ones published by traditional publishers as well as in the self-published field. For someone with a Mark Twain quote appearing at the bottom of your posts, you'd think you'd be more positive toward self-publishers.
