Would you choose to self-pub over trad pub?

It's possible to pull ("unpublish") your work from Amazon, clean it up, and repub it at a better time. See this page here.

And oh, yes, the so-called publishing houses that gave you offers are vanity presses and therefore a scam. You were not stupid when you ignored them.

 

Thanks, I assumed as much. From what I remember (just in case anyone is looking through publishers and comes across them) the ones that asked for money were:

Pegasus
Austin Macauley

And one more that I can’t remember right now. And I’ll have a look into pulling my book, thank you!

 

Ooh, Pegasus. http://www.michaelmorning.com/2015/09/why-i-chose-integrity-over-a-publishing-contract/

 

Self publishing is a fine option for people who write outside the box, or who can't be bothered chasing traditional publishers. (Check out our own @Lew for some pretty heartening statistics.) However, it does require that authors take time to make the book as perfect as possible BEFORE publication.

Self-pubbed authors need to be great at editing for style, content and story flow—or find somebody who is. They need to have a meticulous eye for typos and SPAG errors, or find somebody who is. They need to be able to format the book so it reads well on a Kindle screen AND on paper, if they plan to also release print-on-demand. They need to come up with a back cover blurb and an overall cover design that doesn't scream 'amateur!'

The reason so many self-pubbed books fail is because too many new authors can't wait to get their book in print, and do what you did. You should never send a book to publication that is full of SPAG errors and not very well written in general. (I have no idea what your cover or your cover blurb was like.)

Don't run away with the idea that self-pubbing is bad. Just keep in mind that you need to be able to do what professional editors and publishers do for traditionally published books. There is a lot LOT to learn, and many skills you need to either have yourself, or be willing to pay others to do for you. (Book cover design, editing, proofreading, formatting, etc.)

The good side of self publishing is that you have total control over your product. The bad side of self publishing is that you have total control over your product! You need to be as good at the finishing end of this game as you are with the original writing. And then you need to work on promotion as well.

Don't be in an all-fired hurry to get your book into print. Make sure the story is solid and error-free before you even start the process.

 

If a self-publisher sold 10K copies I'd say they should be over-the-moon ecstatic. But there's a HELL of a hard slog between self-publishing the book and getting 10K sales.

And contracts with any publisher I've worked with specify that they're getting first rights to the book - someone like @The Piper can't sign a contract like that without committing fraud, which is a poor way to begin as a writer. Once a book is self-published the vast majority publishers are very unlikely to be interested in it unless it sold very well (which it's unlikely to do).

And before we use @Lew's numbers as a pro-self-publishing tale, we should probably ask him for an update on his numbers - not just the sales, but also the costs incurred. Last I heard he was nowhere near breaking even on this project, let alone making a profit. And I think he's happy with that approach and just wants to get his books read, and that's great and I respect all his hard work, but a lot of other authors are looking for at least some profit from their publishing ventures.

I don't want to get back into the debate, but I certainly disagree with the idea that self-pubbed books fail because the authors have rushed into things. Lots of self-published books are pretty polished and still do poorly.

Self-publishing isn't "bad", but it's a hell of a lot of hard work. Characterizing writers who work with publishers as "chasing" the publishers and "writing inside the box" isn't helpful to the debate, to my mind.

 

How a traditional publishing house guages the success of a book depends on a lot of things. Using rough numbers, if a publisher signed a contract with an author for an advance of 5¢ a book and gave them an advance of 500$, then published 12,000 copies of that book and sold 10,000 that would be a success. Not a huge success, but a good one because it pays off the advance without having to give further royalties and +80% percent of the published books sold, but not all of them shoeing they miscalculated the market and under printed the book. This is pretty much the most profit a book can bring to a publishing house. If however a publisher signed an author for a 40,000$ advance and a royalty of 5¢ a book, published 1,000,000 copies and only sold 500,000, then that's a failure. The first book that sold 10,000 copies is more of a success than the one that sold 500,000. Mind you, a book selling 10,000 copies might just be a bit too small for a few publishing houses, so they might pass on it just because of that, but still.

 

I think you may be over-estimating the importance of the advance in terms of figuring out how profitable a book is.

The big authors, for example, rarely earn out their advances, but the publishing companies still make money on their books. Smaller publishers or newer authors may have much lower advances, to the point that the advance isn't a significant expense compared to the costs of editing, promo, printing, distribution, etc. So just because that author has earned out their advance doesn't mean the company is making a profit on the book.

And I don't understand what you're saying with the "book that sold 500K a failure" idea based on a 40K advance. It may be a failure based on printing costs, etc., but the advance doesn't really enter into it. I mean, if the author is only getting 5 cents a book the author needs to have a serious talk with her agent, but that aside... if the company sold 500K copies at, say, $8 per book (the bookstore would charge more, of course, but if that's how much the company gets from the deal...)

That'd be $4 million gross income. Subtract printing and shipping costs, maybe $2/book for a million books (I think that's high, but whatever). That still leaves $2 million to cover the editing, promo, and other in-house costs, and the paltry $40K advance. Lots of room for profit for that book.

TL;DR: I don't think there's a real relationship between earning out the advance and the publishing company making a profit.

 

Yeah, I don't have a great understanding of the the ebook side of things, I was just giving a rough average of ebooks versus print books and came up with 5$ per copy and was planning on using the 10% of the net I used to get as royalties for selling in print books as a royalty, but misplaced the decimal in my head. Bad math aside, though, a book selling a few copies and over performing is still more of a success than a book selling a lot of copies but not meeting expectations.

 

I guess that depends how you define "success". There's a sort of public-image personal-best type success that, I agree, would weigh in favour of the underperformer.

But for my definition, I'd say an NHL player having an off season is more of a success (as a hockey player) than somebody having a great year in the bar league. The NHL player will get a lot of shit in the press and yelled at by his coaches, but he's still making millions of dollars playing the game he loves...

 

Sorry, more on track - I find I end up getting about $1/book sold from publishers, almost regardless of publication track/publisher size. Whether it's 50% of e-book net or 8% of print book cover or whatever, it all seems to end up around $1/book, more or less.

 

Either way it's win for the author, but the better 'success' the author has in the minor leagues, the more likely it they are to break into the big leagues. Flunk out of the big leagues and the harder it will be for them to make it back there, just because people are going to more wary of them. Unlike the NHL, though, in publishing an author can always just change their name and get a (sort of) fresh start.

 

Concur with @BayView, self-publishing is hard work, and not cheap. My numbers continue to roll up and I am selling books per hour, but that costs a couple of hundred bucks per month to keep the promos going. The good side is, it generates a lot of positive reviews, the book seems to be getting known, along with me. I am a total unknown to the literary field, so getting a start in this new field is the same kind of challenge I felt when I first climbed into a T-34 almost half a century ago to begin a career in Naval aviation. I knew then that I wasn't going to make a lot of money, it would dangerous and hard work, but I accepted that. Starting out with my new day job is taking the same amount of effort... and you know what? I am coming up on the big 70, and seeing my sales respond to my efforts is as exhilarating as kicking that T-34 into my first spin and recovering fifty years ago! Not many things at this age match that.

Would I self-publish again? You bet! I would rather market than write query letters. However, as a caution to all newbies... FINISH THE JOB BEFORE YOU PUBLISH! Edit, edit, edit, for story line, character arc, plot holes, all the things I had never heard of when I finished my first draft 2 years ago. If it doesn't look like it was published by Simon and Schuster... it's not ready for self-publication.

 

@big soft moose and @BayView, it looks like this month is going to be positive, including proceeds from handsales at various venues as well as on-line sales. Not by much, in the double digits, but it is black and not red for the first time since I started in March. Of course I am not counting attending the Hi$torical Writer$ of America conference last month. Consider that a tax-deductible vacation for me and @K McIntyre!

 

By the way, that should be books per day, I only distribute books per hour during my free giveaways. I am at that happy point in my life that I don't care whether I make any money at this, as long as people enjoy the story. Sales and reviews indicate that they do. Now I did give a signed copy to George R. R. Martin at the HWA conference (I had to pay for "Game of Thrones" to get his signature) and had a nice hour-long chat with him at the social. So IF he actually reads E&D, and IF he likes it and IF he gives it to his screenwriters as a Sierra Hotel story, THEN I may reach my break-even point much sooner than expected. Otherwise, well, I don't want to leave my kids too big an inheritance and ruin their lives.

 

And we learned a lot - or at least I did. Got to meet George R R Martin too.

 

I would love to make some money on my writing, but if I don't I won't be crushed. I wrote Parham's Mill to prove to myself that I could write a novel, so I consider that a success. I feel much more emboldened with the second book!