hybrid publishing model

On Established Authors Singing The Praises Of Self-publishing

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This post by Alan Baxter originally appeared on his Warrior Scribe site on 6/1/15.

Let me start this piece with the following: I have no problem with any method of publishing. Whatever works for you and gets you the results you want is great. I’m a hybrid author – I’ve self-published in the past, I still self-publish a small amount and nowadays I’m mostly traditionally published in both big and small press. This is not about criticising any particular path to publication.

Okay?

Good. Glad we’ve got that covered. What I do want to talk about is a thing I’ve seen a lot of lately, most recently in this article by Harry Bingham. There have been several of these things, (Konrath is the feral posterboy for the movement – search him up yourself if you’re interested) but in a nutshell, the case they’re stating is this:

The great machine of publishing is constantly morphing and moving on, but we’re now in the era of self-publishing and that’s the way forward for everyone. They cite their own recent successes as evidence.

Now, self-publishing is in a huge renaissance and it is a great way forward for many people. But these authors going on about how they’re leaving the behemoth of traditional publishing for the clear, honest waters of self-publishing success are being disingenuous at best and wilfully ignorant at worst.

 

Read the full post on Warrior Scribe.

 

Indie & Trad Publishing & Flying Monkeys On The Yellow Brick Road!

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This post by Bob Mayer originally appeared on his Write On The River site on 2/12/15.

As you negotiate your journey through the wonderful world of publishing, be careful of those flying monkeys as you gaze in the crystal ball of your career path.

Don’t take anyone else’s monkey as your own! We all are on our unique yellow brick roads to Oz, whatever Oz might be for each of us.

Lately I’ve run into some new writers at conferences who eventually whisper to me they’ve signed a traditional deal, but they’re afraid to mention it to anyone because they get castigated. The attitude seems to be that if the book is good enough to get a book deal, then self-publishing makes more sense.

What a change in just a few years when people would break open a bottle of champagne upon getting a book deal. Now one almost dares not mention it for fear of being ridiculed for not taking the indie route. There are some indie authors saying they will never go back to traditional publishing; the key phrase is “go back”. It’s curious that a lot of us who have been successful as indies actually started in traditional publishing, giving us a distinct leg up; along with a thing called backlist.

 

Read the full post on Write On The River.

 

The Self-Curating (Mostly Indie) Slush Pile

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This post by JH Mae originally appeared on IndieReader on 2/4/15.

These days, self-publishing doesn’t necessarily mean your novel will wither and die, unread, on the digital and real life bookshelves. Books with polished writing, a compelling voice, eye-catching covers, promising sales numbers and an author with a decent reader following may be destined for great things. Meaning a traditional book deal.

With so many indie titles released every day, the pool of authors has become something of a resource for literary agents eager to unearth new talent and sign the next breakaway bestseller – and a testing ground. “Traditional publishers let the indie market experiment, then they swoop in and try to grab what has worked,” said literary agent Evan Marshall with the Evan Marshall Agency. “When a (book) is of high quality, the attention and popularity naturally come with it.”

The main indicator is sales rankings, which creates a “slush pile that is self-curating,” added Laurie McLean, a partner at Fuse Literary Inc. Basically, if the numbers just aren’t there and the book isn’t making waves in the indie market, it likely won’t stand a chance in the traditional one, either, added Andrea Hurst, literary agent with Andrea Hurst & Associates.

 

Read the full post on IndieReader.

 

Why Traditionally Publish? A Response To A Comment

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This post by Chuck Wendig originally appeared on his terribleminds site on 1/19/15.

So, the other day I said something about how in publishing no real debate exists and hey isn’t it super-nifty that we have lots of options and all options are equal and valid in the eyes of WRITING JESUS and I dunno, I probably said something else but I tend to fade out.

One such comment on that post was the following, by addadinsane:

You think that’s just vanity publishing? There’s no difference between how much work you have to do in marketing whether you’re trad published or self-published. The only authors that get a marketing budget nowadays are the huge sellers. (Even my friend who is A-list doesn’t get one – he’s still not big enough.)

It was funny, I was on a panel a couple of months back with a bunch of traditionally published authors and someone in the audience brought this up, said to me “But don’t you have to do all the marketing yourself?” So I turned to the other five panellists and said “Hey guys, how much marketing do you have to do?” Answers ranged from “Loads” to “All of it”.

And trad publishers take a lot more than 50%. One wonders what for.

I’m all in favour of “no debate” but I think people should be accurately informed about the truth of traditional publishing rather than looking through rose-tinted spectacles. Then they can make an informed decision.

Frankly I don’t know why anyone goes trad published to be honest. The only reason I’ve heard recently is that they want to be a “proper” author. And if that isn’t vanity, I don’t know what is.

And I wanted to respond to it. But I started to write up my response and found it too long for a mere paltry comment, and figured, hey, well, I’ll take up some oxygen at the blog, proper.

 

Read the full post on terribleminds.

 

Should You Publish Indie or Traditional? A Hybrid Author Busts the Myths

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This post by Holly Robins originally appeared on her site on 8/17/14.

Yesterday, I gathered with a group of area writers at the Haverhill Public Library Authors Fair. My table was situated between Kristin Bair O’Keeffe, an author who publishes traditionally, and Connie Johnson Hambley, a self-published mystery writer. This was the perfect place for me: I’m a hybrid author who has jumped from a traditional publisher (Random House) to indie publishing and back to a traditional house again. As I start my fourth novel to be published by New American Library/Penguin Random House, I have no contract for the next one. This means that I’m revisiting the all-important question for many writers: do I want to go solo when I publish my next book, or stay where I am?
This is a good time to roundup what I’ve learned about publishing. In the process, I want to dismantle four common myths:

1. Publishers are Out to Screw Authors
MYTH. Publishing companies are businesses that compete in a global marketplace. Their job is to make money—and, in so doing, they will make money for you.

With a traditional publisher, you will get royalties from your books—typically about 25 percent of ebook sales. This is much less than the percentage of royalties you’ll get if you self publish. Rates vary, but with self publishing, you’ll reap about 65 percent of a book sale as your royalty rate.

On the other hand, with a traditional publishing deal, you will get an advance against royalties—anywhere from $5K to $45K for most first-time novelists, though of course there are some pie-in-the-sky whopper deals. You will also get—for free!–an editor, publicist, marketing team, designers, sales people, etc. Your team at a traditional publisher will help you whip your book into shape and get it into the hands of readers.

 

Click here to read the full post on Holly Robins’ site.

 

When An Author Should Self-Publish And How That Might Change

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This post by Mike Shatzkin originally appeared on his The Shatzkin Files blog on 4/17/14. a

There is a question that every agent and publisher is dealing with, because authors surely are. And that’s this: when should an author self- (or indie-) publish?

The answer is certainly not “never”, and if there is anybody left in a publishing house who thinks it is, they should think a little harder.

For a number of reasons, the belief here is that most of the time for most authors who can get a deal with an established and competent house, their best choice is to take it. It’s good to get an advance that is partially in your pocket before the manuscript is even finished and assured once it is. It’s good to have a team of capable professionals doing marketing work that authors are seldom equipped to do well themselves and which can be expensive to buy freelance, particularly if you don’t know how. It’s good to have a coordinated effort to sell print and ebooks, online and offline, and it’s good to have the supply chain ready for your book, with inventory in place where it can help stimulate sales, when you fire the starting gun for publicity and marketing. And it’s great to have an organization turning your present book into more dollars while you as an author focus on generating the next one, and start pocketing the next advance.

Publishers have heretofore really had only one model for working with authors. They acquire the rights, usually paying an advance-against-royalties, and own and control the entire process of publishing. It is generally understood that all efforts to make the book known can show benefits in all the commercial channels it exploits. So publishers have generally insisted on, and authors have generally accepted, controlling all the rights to a book when they pay that advance. The two pretty standard, time-honored exceptions have been cinematic (Hollywood) rights, which are rarely controlled by the publisher, and foreign territory and language rights, which are only sometimes controlled by the publisher.

Since publishers until very recently effectively monopolized the path to market, they could effectively make the rules about what an author could publish.asdf

 

Click here to read the full post on The Shatzkin Files.

 

Declarations and Forecasts of Great Change in the Book Business Need Specificity to be Useful and Often Do Not Provide It

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This post by Mike Shatzkin originally appeared on his The Shatzkin Files blog on 3/4/14.

A recent post here that incited a long comment string and another on FutureBook that was quite unrelated from the estimable Brian O’Leary have helped me formulate some thinking which I hope can be helpful in evaluating any “Great Change” post that arises about publishing. And they do, indeed, arise often.

O’Leary’s post builds on a theme he is persistent about pursuing, which is that communication, which in his writing seems to conflate with publishing, is moving to a linked-and-continuous conversation rather than a set-content-package (like a book or a magazine). The post suggests that the “books”, such as they are, will emerge from the conversations.

This recalls for me a comment I heard a few years ago from the father of digital publishing, David Worlock. David told me, “surely, in time, the number of books created within the network must exceed the number of books created outside the network”. By “network”, David meant “Internet”.

I don’t know how long “in time” was intended to be in David’s mind, but I figured “decades”. And in that time frame, I agree.

The other long-ago wisdom I keep recalling as I read predictions about our digital reading future is what was always said by Mark Bide when we began our “Publishing in the 21st Century” conferences for VISTA (now Publishing Technology) in the 1990s. Mark always reminded the audience that “book publishing is many different businesses” so that everybody would keep in mind that what we said about trade might not apply to sci-tech and what we said about books for lawyers and accountants doesn’t apply to publishers of college textbooks. What brought everybody together was the form of the “book”, which was already then a weak unifying principle for what were really many very different businesses.

 

Click here to read the full post on The Shatzkin Files.