Self-Publishing?

Does anyone have advice on reasons to/reasons not to self-publish? I have a full, finished book and cover, but I'm not sure which route to go with. I've had a few people read it-family members, in-laws, a woman I barely know-and feedback has been overwhelmingly positive so far so I'm encouraged and hopeful. Has anyone on here had success with it?

 

Most traditional publishers want first publication rights.

If you self-publish, you will have used up first publication rights. Once gone, they're gone forever.

People will tell you that, no! That's wrong! If you have big big big success in self-publishing, traditional publishers will CLAMOR for the right to publish your book! If you're a success, they no longer care about first publication rights!

But...that requires the big big success. You will need to make lots and lots of sales.

And you will be publishing a book without professional editing, professional layout, professional marketing--you will have none of the professional services, and you will be competing with books that do have all those services. You will be competing as one drop in the huge, HUGE ocean of incredibly bad self-published books. You will be depending on people divining the (hopefully) higher quality of your book and fishing you out of that ocean. So many people that you will be that big big big success.

The most likely outcome to self-publishing is that you will use up your first publication rights, you will sell very few copies, and your book will be essentially thrown away.

So, in my opinion, yeah, there are huge reasons not to self publish. If your book is really good, your best shot at success for it is traditional publishing. Start submitting it to agents.

 

1. How much is big big big success in numbers?

2. How much is lot of sales in numbers?

3. If you are ready to sacrifice one or two books to self publishing AND you believe they could sell well because of their topic + some other things, how much you need to sell to get attention of good agents?

 

My agent isn't interested in my "niche" writing because the sales numbers are too low for bigger publishers to be interested, and I generally sell at least 5K sometimes 10K copies. And these are at full price ($6-$9 for an e-book, for example) so the numbers would probably have to be significantly higher for a self-publisher selling at a discount. Like, if I sell 10K e-books @ $8 per copy, assuming my publisher gets 70% from the marketfronts, the publisher would be grossing $56K on that book. And that's too small for the big publishers to be interested in.

You need to sell a LOT of copies as a self-publisher before the Big Five come knocking. And if smaller publishers are interested, I'd ask yourself whether you want to sign with them, if you're already having that kind of success on your own.

 

Excuse my ignorance, but what you're saying is that once a traditional deal has been arranged, that publisher basically owns you and everything you write until that deal is undone one way or another?

 

Not unless you're an idiot and have signed a terrible contract with a terrible publisher.

There's no way to make any absolute statements because every contract is different, but I've signed... I don't know, maybe twenty? Probably more... contracts with publishers and the MOST restrictive I've ever signed gave rights to first refusal in my next work in the same sub-genre. More often there's been rights to first refusal on other works using the same characters or setting (ie. sequels). I've never seen a contract that tries to take rights to all future writings.

I'm not saying people shouldn't read their contracts carefully and shouldn't be willing to walk away from a bad deal. But what it really comes down to is... authors who work with publishers aren't stupid. We don't sign stupid contracts that rob us of our rights. Why would we?

 

I've had contracts for short fiction that say the rights revert back to me after publication. That they are buying is first rights. But it does give them permission to reprint my story online or in anthologies. Still, the rights came back to me and and was free to sell reprints so long as I mentioned where the story was first published. No one has ever asked me for first refusal, though I wouldn't mind that at all.

I've sold news stories to magazines and newspapers where the contracts were a little different. One publication I ended up doing several articles for bought all the rights and said I couldn't write on the same topic for another publication for six months after publication. It was a non-compete clause. I don't know if that was a good deal or not, but it was for a good magazine that ended up buying several news stories from me. I think with news magazines and newspapers it's more common to sign over all rights for a piece. I did walk away from one deal with a magazine because of the contract. It basically said that if I went with them, I couldn't write for anyone they considered competition (which was basically everyone) on anything remotely related for two years. Again, that was a non-compete clause, but they weren't paying me well enough to even consider signing a contract like that.

I've never had a book contract, but I'm hoping I have an agent to help with that when the time comes. I think first refusal can be a good thing for the writer because it means they are interested in seeing more from you and hopefully publishing more from you. I've hear that places like The New Yorker have a stable of writers who are on first refusal contracts, but are compensated for giving the magazine first refusal in addition to what they buy.

First refusal and non compete clauses are much different than they own everything you will ever write. I've never heard of anything like that.

 

FYI -- It's trade not trad. But whatever.

All publishers buy rights. That's what happens in the biz. If you can sell your story (which does mean some rights if not all) for big money to an awesome publisher, isn't that the main goal? Yes, read the contract and be smart, but in order to trade publish, you are selling rights to your work. And a multi-book deal just means they are buying more from you and paying you more too.

 

There are reversion clauses in just about every contract. Terms vary and used to be based on being "out of print" - if the publisher is no longer making the books available for sale, the rights return to the author. More modern contracts have reversions based on sales levels - if the publisher sells (or pays royalties on) less than X books per year, the rights return to the author on request. Other publishers buy rights for only a certain number of years.

 

Makes sense, people do need to take personal responsibility for anything they sign.

On another note, is there any evidence to suggest that a certain genre (fiction vs non-fiction for example) tends to fare better in the self published market? Or does it once again come back to the quality of the work?

 

I think there are definitely differences in the smaller genres...

For non-fiction, I think self-publishers do well if they have a strong platform of their own. If you're speaking to a crowd about your area of expertise and have books to sell at the back of the room or a link to your e-book at the end of your presentation, you can do really well. My understanding is that it's quite a bit harder to get an audience without the platform. (A possible exception to this, strangely, may be how-to-write-and-self-publish books. I guess people interested in writing and self-publishing are open to reading self-published books on the topic?)

Within fiction, there are definitely genres that have more success with self-publishing... I think there's probably a correlation with the genres where readers have readily shifted to e-books. Romance readers, for example, tend to be voracious and have therefore been early adopters of e-books. And there are quite a few successful romance authors self-publishing. My understanding is that children's books do poorly with self-publishing, as a rule, again because they don't tend to do well with e-books.

 

I can imagine a strong platform prior to publishing would make all the difference for a self publisher.

I did also read once that even when going through a publisher, at least for their first book, authors still have to do a fair amount of marketing work themselves to get the book out there. Is this accurate?

 

In my experience, the advantage of working with publishers is that they set up the marketing opportunities for you, but, yeah, you still have to do a fair bit yourself. I'm not sure that's ever been different - I mean, a publisher can set up a book tour or an interview, but it's still the author who has to tour or give answers, right?

So, for me, the advantages of working with publishers are the promo doors that are open. I had a couple books that came out from Penguin, and one of the most powerful tools they used was a full-colour catalogue of their offerings for that month that was sent out to all the bookstores. I had a half-page ad in the publication, right opposite a full-page ad for the new Nora Roberts book. The big publishers are able to market effectively to book sellers rather than book buyers.

With smaller publishers, it's been more a case of them setting up blog tours or interviews. I probably could have gotten some of that access myself, but the larger online blogs are pretty selective about who they host, so I wouldn't have had as much luck on my own.

 

An interesting point, especially as many seem to simply focus on a book being marketed to those who will buy it as opposed to who will sell it.

I guess my only other concern would be sacrificing or comprimising certain aspects of a creation to meet a publishers requirements, like a title for example.

Have you ever had such issues?

 

I've definitely had publishers change titles, and have had to change aspects of my story in order to get the book accepted by publishers in the first place.

I think it comes down to your reasons for wanting to write/publish. If your primary goal is creativity/self-expression, I think you're better off self-publishing. You're unlikely to reach as large of a market, but whatever you put out will be 100% you (for better or for worse). If your primary goal is sales/profit, I think you should work with a reputable publisher, if you can. They're in the business of giving readers what they want, and in general, they seem to be pretty good at it (with some notable exceptions, obviously).

My primary motive is sales/profits. So if someone who's in the business of selling books tells me my title is unlikely to sell books, then I want to listen to them and change my title. But if my primary motive was self-expression, I can see this being a problem.

 

That’s a really interesting story, super relevant too. Crazy how even the biggest names fall victim to these things.

Thanks for this, it’s given me a lot of food for thought. I am working on something with which the primary goal is to put it in people’s hands as I have created it. Profit is currently more of an ancillary thought, if a thought at all, so you’ve definitely given me plenty to consider.

 

Try doing a quick google search. You're wrong and I don't know who else is, but it is TRADE not TRAD.

 

People use both. You'll often see "traditional" or "trad" versus self-publishing. Others use the term "trade" publishing as opposed to self-publishing. Sometimes, you'll see both used in the same article so that people who use one term versus another aren't confused.

 

I think there was initially a lot of pushback against "traditional" because it was used by a lot of early self-publishing proponents as a euphemistic slur. In line with "legacy publishing", "dead-tree publishing", etc. ETA: And obviously there isn't much that's "traditional" about a lot of modern publishing companies, so it's not a very accurate term.

But "trade" isn't an exact term, either, because quite a few people in the industry use it to mean publishers who market primarily to "trade"; that is, publishers who sell to other booksellers rather than selling themselves. So a lot of the smaller, newer publishers, especially those that are e-first or e-only, don't fit into that definition of the term.

I skip over it all by saying I'm a writer who "works with publishers", but that's more of a mouthful than ideal.