Chelsea Green is an employee-owned independent publisher. A story from 2014 says that they employ about 20 people, publish 25-30 books a year, and have about $5 million in sales. They have published six of my very favorite garden books, another one that charmed me so much that I bought it despite having absolutely no use for it, and while I was counting up those six on their website I saw a couple dozen more that I'd love to read, and one that I will be buying. Indie publishers? All for them. I'd be incandescent with happiness if I sold a nonfiction book to Chelsea Green. Sold a book. As in, submitted a book. For their evaluation. Because they are not a self-publishing printer that I can just hire to print my work. They are a very small, and very high quality, indie publisher. They're not going to publish my work unless it's very good. But you have defined me as despising indie publishers, so Chelsea Green is obviously a figment of my imagination.
I see re-releases as a different category, because the book has been through the vetting and editing process. One of the few exceptions to my "Self published? Never mind," policy is an author that I learned to like through her traditionally published books, who is now re-releasing the older ones as a self-publisher. If that same author self-published a brand new book, I would probably read it, but I'd feel just a whisper of wariness.
So that really blurs the lines even more. The others were people unknown to me, and I paid them for their work. They didn't pay anything to me, and I pay out royalties on sales. But anyone finding my books will see that publisher listed and see that other author's stories are there. One of the anthologies I published even got a nice review from a fairly well known source and that kicked up sale for a time. However, even with big publishers, this raises a question. Eric Flint is the guy who runs Jim Baen's Universe, part of Baen publishing. Flint has a bunch of novels published through Baen. He also has stories published through Jim Baen's Universe. So despite being a successful traditionally-published author, are his works in JBU self-published? That would seem an odd characterization. If you look at what the indie publisher who published 50 Shades was when they started, before the success of those particular books, they looked a lot more like a group of people like me than they do now, and that was the environment in which the novel really hit it big. Yes, there was a publishing name behind it, just like there is behind my work, but on the continuum of publishing they were a lot closer to what I'm doing than to what the large publishers or even established indie publishers do. But after 50 Shades hit big, I don't doubt they transformed into something more substantial.
That's what it looked like to me. And I didn't just take someone on the Internet's word for it. I did my best to investigate what the actual facts were.
So the other authors are indie published. Yours are self published. As far as I'm concerned, if a top executive at HarperCollins decrees that HarperCollins is going to publish his memoir, that memoir is self published. It's self published with every luxury that a self published work can possibly get, but it's self published. If he has the power to unilaterally declare that those books will be published, yep. Self-published. Again, luxuriously self-published, but self-published. I'd need to know what the submission and approval process looked like, and how much influence the author had over it, to decide whether I consider it self published. If the author wasn't an owner, spouse, relative, or close friend of an owner, and didn't write a check to get it published, I suspect I would not consider it self published.
Yes. And you can look at writer forum conversations about the publisher from the time period before 50 Shades was the big hit and see how leery authors were - not much resources put into publishing. Paperbacks running $25 because they were POD. Questions about what discrimination was applied to accepting books, and so on. I haven't said the book was self-published, just that from what was going on at the time it was a lot closer to self-publishing than what would have been considered legitimate traditional publishing. There's a reason articles like the one I posted from the Atlantic talk about that book in terms of self-publishing success, and that is part of it. The other part of it is that the author already had quite a following for it after truly self-publishing online for free, before her publishing contract. Kind of like The Martian is a big self-publishing success story even though a traditional publisher has it now. It was self-published free on Wattpad, then self-published on Amazon, and then picked up by a traditional publisher (by which time it already had a fan base).
I responded to your false assertion that I'm opposed to indie publishing. I notice that you have responded to posts after that post, but not mine. Can I safely assume that you will not be responding to my failure to comply with your definition of reality? (Edited to note, in case you missed it, that the response that I refer to was the post about Chelsea Green.)
So, we've established that neither @BayView nor @ChickenFreak are opposed to indie publishing. Seems the problem has been resolved.
That seems to me to be quite a different situation. It's an indie publisher, but not in the same ballpark of what I'm doing or what the 50 Shades publisher was doing when they started out. Chelsea Green sounds a lot more like a traditional small press. My point in this thread is that the 50 Shades publisher was not. You seem to me to have a pretty clear bias against self-publishing, which I think it why you're trying your best to push the 50 Shades publisher closer to Chelsea Green, whereas at the time they took on 50 Shades it looks to me like they were a lot closer to someone just setting up an imprint online and publishing like self-publishers often do.
Are you able to understand, at all, the distinction I'm making between (1) the publisher deciding whether the author's work is good enough to publish and (2) the author deciding whether the author's work is good enough to publish? I'm not asking if you agree, I'm asking if you comprehend, even a little bit?
I can't speak for @Steerpike but I'm not having any trouble understanding your distinction. But it seems you are having trouble understanding it isn't clear that anyone at the CoffeeShop decided to publish 50 Shades any more than anyone at Smashwords decides to publish or not publish a POD book.
Expanding on the "able to comprehend" theme: Steerpike, you seem to be deeply invested in my having whatever beliefs you've attributed to anyone who doesn't advocate self-publishing. So deeply invested that you sometimes seem to be unable or unwilling to comprehend my words when I say something that you didn't predict that I would say. I very much hope that it's "unwilling", because I find "unable"--a true inability to comprehend what another person says when it's contrary to what you expected them to say--to be very disturbing. But whether it's unwilling or unable, it makes the conversation a waste of time. You're not arguing with me, you're arguing with a fictional character that you've created. You're Beetlejuice, silencing Lydia and making her say what he wants her to say, except you--well, and possibly one other person in the thread--are the only one that hears it. I may or may not keep arguing in this thread, but I need to try hard to remember that you can't hear me.
I really don't mean any offence by this, I always enjoy your posts, but you aren't exactly innocent of this yourself. You two aren't seeing eye to eye, so it seems best to just leave it at a disagree.
And therefore the evidence, on a more probable basis than not, supports the conclusion 50 Shades was initially for all practical purposes, self published. If you add to that it had a considerable following as self published fan-fic, it's especially silly to argue that doesn't also count as making one's own way with one's novel before a traditional publisher invested in it.
Well, I'm sure that's the conclusion that you'd prefer, but I certainly can't see a logical trail that comes to that conclusion. It is certainly possible that it was self-published, and therefore possible that it serves as an example of a successful self-published novel. Whether it was or not, there certainly have been some successful self-published novels. But that fact was never in dispute. Neither is the fact that there have certainly been some lottery winners. But I still don't invest anything that is of importance to me in the lottery.
Hi, Ok, at the risk of being a pain guys, why not do your own research? Just go to kindle bestsellers, and run through the top twenty or so and see how many are indies. I'm too lazy to do this myself, but the last time I heard someone give the results of a similar survey, it was around fifty percent indie. And I should point out that these top ranked books are selling either in the many hundreds per day or thousands - so that equates at least in my mind to fantastically well received. The NYT best seller list will be far more heavily weighted towards the trade published I assume. Cheers, Greg.
But that wouldn't answer the question that I want answered. The proportions at the top aren't really meaningful information unless you expect to be at the top. They're the equivalent of lottery winners. I want information that simply isn't available. I want information about all the would-be authors in a given period of time, let's say two years, who: - Were previously unpublished. - Who have decent manuscripts ready to go. "Decent manuscripts" is a concept that would require a ton of definition. But it's only fair to throw the lousy ones out on both sides. I want, for all those authors, to know: - What publishing avenue, if any, they take. (Or strive for, in the case of unsuccessfully seeking traditional publishing.) - How many sales they make. - How many readers they get. - How much money they make. Then I'd have to set a number of goals to measure against. Let's say: - Being read by at least a hundred readers. - Being read by at least a thousand readers. - Being read by at least five thousand readers. I'd want to calculate the odds of each outcome, depending on which publishing path was chosen or, in the case of traditional publishing, aimed for. I suspect that the odds of being read by at least a thousand readers would be substantially higher for the authors that persistently sought traditional publication than for those authors that either briefly sought it and switched to self-publishing, or just started with self-publishing. But I don't know. Given that we can't get the basic information about the quality of the manuscripts, it's really not possible to know. But the proportions of best-sellers reflecting a given publishing method really doesn't tell me anything that I'm trying to find out.
I suppose the irony here escapes you. It's the conclusion I think the evidence supports after I heard the self-published claim was false. I really don't have anything invested in it one way or the other. I prefer to correct my false beliefs when I find them. There are plenty of other self-published successes and whether 50 Shades was or wasn't one of them is hardly a critical thing. It's not about confirmation bias here. It's about drawing the conclusion most supported by the evidence. One is more likely to be accurate if one goes where the evidence leans even if proof is not evident than if one sticks with a default conclusion ignoring all evidence because it is not perfect. What's the alternative? You are using the default conclusion, the CoffeeShop was a traditional publisher. But there is less evidence that's the case. They described themselves as a community of writers. They are still a fan-fic site. We know 50 Shades had an extensive following as fan-fic before it was published. Like Amanda Hocking, sometimes fame comes before the traditional publisher's door knock.
That's what you've got left? I suppose it is easier than arguing the facts, particularly given your unfortunate choice of which side of the debate to throw in with. Let's just agree that 1) we aren't going to agree; and 2) this disagreement upsets you beyond the point of reasonable discourse.
Hi Chicken, Sorry the information you want simply doesn't exist. But allow me to answer your question at least partially. If you took a thousand authors with books ready to go, split them in half, with one lot trying to get trade publishing deals and the other half indie publishing, the indies would earn far more (though their expenses would be greater too). It's a sad fact of life but at least 99% of authors with books ready to go will not get trade publishing contracts at all - forget big five. If instead you only looked at those who had got trade publishing deals, they earn more than indies on average. However, most authors going either route, earn very little from their sales and have few sales. Cheers, Greg.
I think that it's having words put in my mouth that upsets me, but that is a consistent strategy with you on this one issue. I suspect that you're the one that finds the issue incredibly upsetting. Either way, yes, the discussion isn't going to find a meaningful conclusion.
Actually, I've read that the odds of publication are closer to ten percent, when you throw out the huge volume of bad manuscripts. But that's not a firm number--I think that it was just an anecdotal guess from someone in the industry, and I don't have it to cite, so I don't expect you to take it from me. But since I'm the one that read it, and I found the source convincing at the time, it forms part of MY thinking on the subject. I would suspect that if even one percent of authors get trade publishing contracts, those one percent will probably make more than one hundred times the income of the average self publishing author, and thus the average income would probably be higher for those authors. That's even a number that could sort of be calculated, because both sides of the calculation actually entered commerce. But it wouldn't be fair to the self-publishing side, because all of their really bad books would still be in the mix, while the trade published authors would have at least a minimum quality level.
I'm not sure this is accurate if you're talking Big Five trade publishing - I guess you need to define "very little" and "few sales", but in terms of earning, most Big Five publishers give advances that I would say qualify as over the "very little" threshold. So most self-published authors earn very little, most authors who TRY for Big Five publishing earn very little (because they don't get contracts) but almost all authors who successfully get a Big Five contract get an advance, which means they're making... I don't know, probably at least $50-$10K a book, which isn't a lot, but isn't "very little" by my standards, either. If you're talking about smaller publishers that don't offer advances, then maybe you're right.
