I
recently participated in a panel discussion on the “Ins and Outs of Self-Publishing”
sponsored by the Washington, DC chapter of the Women’s National Book Association. In
an overview of how an aspiring author might get her book published, I discussed
both traditional publishing and self-publishing. This is the first posting of a five-part
series in which I’ll offer a summary of my comments.
Publishing Through a Traditional Publisher
An aspiring author can publish a book by
entering into a book publishing contract with a traditional publishing company.
Traditional publishing companies include large houses like Random House and
Simon & Schuster, small presses, and micro presses that might publish only
one or two books per year.
Signing with a traditional publisher means
you deliver your completed manuscript to the publisher and the publisher then
takes charge of all the tasks required to turn your manuscript into a completed
book including typesetting, cover design, printing, and distribution.
As the author, you receive a royalty on
each book sold. My experience with book contracts has been reviewing contracts
for authors being published by large publishing houses which offer royalties of
10% of the cover price with increases to 12.5% and 15% after 5,000 and 10,000
books are sold. Sometimes the royalty is
a percentage of the publisher’s net proceeds rather than a percentage of the
book’s cover price. Small presses and micro presses may pay a lower percentage
royalty.
A royalty of 10-15%
percent of the book’s sales price means the author receives between $2 and $3
for each copy of a $20 book sold. If the author has a literary agent, the
literary agent receives 15% of the author’s earnings on the book.
There are advantages to publishing through
an established publishing company:
- You have the cachet of being published by a
well-established and recognized publishing company.
- An established publishing company will
likely be able to sell more books than you can sell as a self-publisher.
- You have no financial risk.
There are also some disadvantages to
publishing through an established publishing company:
- You relinquish much creative and business
control over your book project.
- If the book is hugely successful, your share
of the financial upside is more limited.
- There is no guarantee a traditional publisher
will accept your book for publication.
Introduction
to Self-Publishing
If
you opt not to use a traditional publisher, you can self-publish. But what exactly does it mean to
self-publish?
Different
people attach different meanings to the term. There are many people inside and outside of the self-publishing industry
who will respond quite passionately if they find you guilty of defining the
term incorrectly. So at the risk of
bringing the wrath of the publishing industry upon myself, I will dare to offer
a definition of what it means to self-publish.
In my view, there are currently at least
three methods of self-publishing. New
technologies and evolutions have caused overlap in the methods and make it
challenging to box each method in one specific category so maybe there are more
than three methods. In any case, I’ll
restrict myself to discussing only three in this blog series:
- Using
Print-on-Demand Printing
- Publishing via
Vanity or Subsidy Press
- Working Directly
with Wholesalers and Distributors
I’ll cover each in turn in forthcoming
postings on “The Ins and Outs of Self-Publishing”. The next entry in this series will be posted
on Thursday, November 8.
