Publishing Trends: Traditional vs ePublishingWritten by Lisa Hood
Publishing Trends: Traditional vs ePublishingYou’ve done what most people only talk about. You’ve written a book, spent countless hours agonizing for just right words only to delete many of them in painful editing process. After many months, or perhaps, many years, you have a manuscript ready for submission. You’ve heard all about struggles for new authors: slush piles, solicited queries only, scam artists and cons, but you know luck or fate or sheer talent will eventually deliver your precious manuscript into right hands at right time. I can’t say that isn’t so. After all, JK Rowling, Stephen King, Danielle Steel, Nora Roberts, Tom Clancy and every other bestselling author were once unpublished and unknown. I can tell you that odds of receiving a lucrative contract with a traditional publisher as an unpublished author are not in your favor. According to Associations of American Publishers (Press Release, 2003) “ U.S. book sales totaled $26,874,100,000 in 2002, a 5.5 percent increase over 2001…” While these numbers are encouraging, it is important to note that 75% (Curtis, 1995, p. 5) of books on bestsellers lists, were written by authors with proven bestselling titles. Why is this? Well, as a reader, you are more likely to invest $15, $20, or $30 if you have some familiarity with author’s work. Not only are readers more likely to choose known authors, so are publishers, motivated by bottom line, dollars and cents. Considering a small publisher will receive 5000 unsolicited queries a month, a junior editor earning $25,000 a year may be able to read four or five a day. You can see that cost to evaluate some 60,000 queries can be $125,000 a year. (Curtis, 1995) If only 1% of unsolicited queries are sent to senior editors, who in turn accept 1%, publisher has invested nearly $50,000, before any contracts are signed, any printing is done, or any marketing undertaken.
| | Publishing Pit BullsWritten by Lisa Hood
Publishing Pit BullsYou have invested a great deal into your writing: time, attention, your heart and soul, maybe even a few tears, and now you’re considering investing even more: your cold hard cash. Rather than accepting “No” as an answer to your dream of being published, you have decided to publish your book yourself. Before you put your money where your mouth is, be aware there are publishers willing to take your money and offer little in return. To self publish, you must take on expense of printing, marketing, distributing and storing of your manuscript. You will be involved in every aspect of publishing process, which could leave you with very little time for writing. However, you will keep 100% of profits from your book sales. You may work with a vanity press, which will print and bind book for a substantial fee. Vanity presses are not selective, they will publish work of any one willing to pay, and they do not edit, market, promote or store books once printed. Some vanity publishers do not require upfront money, but require payment for other “services” such as editing, set up charges, promotional charges, or they may ask authors to buy their own books for resale. While they may call themselves “small press” or “traditional” fact remains they are a pay for print publisher. A subsidy publisher will promote their services as a partnership, perhaps offering to absorb some of publishing costs or provide marketing services. You are still expected to pay a large fee for cost of publishing, but you do not own books once printed and you receive only a portion of profits from book sales. You need to be very careful about using subsidy publishers. The only benefit over vanity press is promise to market and promote your work. However, they have already made plenty of profit just from printing your work and are likely to forego any marketing to make a few more dollars in book sales. It’s much more profitable to just move on to next new author desperate to see their name in print. According to Writers Beware (2004) “…it's rare that this financial investment is ever recouped through sales. Vanity/subsidy publishers have no economic incentive to get books into hands of readers, since they've already made a profit from author's fees. Despite what they may promise, they won't effectively market or distribute your work. Some vanity/subsidy publishers don't even have arrangements with book wholesalers, making it impossible obtain books except through you or maybe publisher's website.”
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