Traditional publishing has its perks. You get the backing of a graphic design department, a marketing department, and the benefits of working with people who know the book industry. You have someone in your corner when you are fighting for shelf placement in bookstores, or trying to protect your intellectual rights, and you have the benefit of working with people who know the ins and outs of the process that bookstores go through to pick and choose the books they carry.
However, unlike in days gone by, you are not likely to see large advances paid out to you. The days of being treated like a king or queen are pretty well gone. Publishing houses are willing to take risks on a limited number of new titles, but they also aren’t going to throw the weight of their marketing budget behind an unknown author unless they are very, very certain that author can produce the sales. Your share of the multi-million dollar marketing budget may be a tiny sliver of what bigger name authors receive, and a lot of that can be eaten up by pre-press marketing to ensure big sales the first day, week, and month. Traditional publishing houses are also slower to pay royalties (usually just twice a year) and the money you make on a $10 book may be just 8 cents each after everybody else has gotten their cut.
Self-Publishing bypasses the waiting lists and allows you to skip the rejection letters completely. You get to keep every penny of the royalties past whatever share of it Amazon or Barnes & Noble’s gets for their part, and you don’t have to fight to get your book out from under a contract that isn’t going so well. You also get paid monthly for your book sales rather than twice a year. However, the downside of self-publishing is that the buck stops with you. You are responsible for absolutely every aspect of producing, marketing, and selling your book. You are responsible for creating a website, developing an audience, editing your book, creating the cover, protecting and defending your intellectual property rights, and making the contacts you’ll need to make to start getting your book noticed in a highly competitive market. Self-publishing can be rewarding, but it can also be a nightmare, too. It can consume so much of your time that it makes finding the time to write more books, an important key to making a sustainable income, very difficult. The choice is yours to make.
About the Author:
Brandy Miller is a Creativity Consultant for Creative Technology Services in Elko, Nevada. She specializes in helping people find creative solutions to everyday problems. She is also the 40 Day Writer, known for her ability to produce quality content at lightning-fast speeds. She has published three books in the last six months, all geared toward helping aspiring authors write more content with higher quality at a faster pace. When she isn’t writing for pay, writing for her own blogs, or writing her next book, she loves to paint, draw, sew, design fabrics, and read books. She graduated in May 2006 with an A.S. in Elementary Education and studied both graphic design and game art and design through the Art Institute Online. She worked for 6 years as a sales service representative for Harcourt School Publishers, and for 2 years in the Marketing Department of Verizon Wireless before leaving to start her own company. She won several honorable mentions for her writing in high school and has won NaNoWriMo on 3 separate occasions.
Reposted From Book Daily
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