IT’S JUST NOT THAT SIMPLE….(or traditional publishing versus self publishing) | In The Dark Of Night
DISCLAIMER: This is ALL to be logged under the category of IMHO and you should know up front that my books are coming out through Kensington, one of the biggest traditional publishers out there.
That being said, let’s begin.
There seem to be two mindsets that dominate this argument. One side is: “Traditional publishing sucks/is evil/is dying/is wrong/sucks and all books will be self published from now on because that is the wave of the future! OMG squeeeeeeeeee!”
versus
“Self published books are all garbage that have to be given away because they are written by hacks who cannot make it because they have no talent, ergo the reason they are hacks, and the fact that they are self publishing proves they don’t have the talent to be a REAL writer. Grumble, grumble, growl.”
Neither one are true especially when applied to the many-headed Hydra that is publishing.
I am traditionally published. I am new to this. So far I LOVE it. I am so absolutely happy that my book is going to go out and live on bookshelves and I will hopefully get to do all the writerly things that go with having said book loose in the wilds of Consumerville. I want to be on panels at conventions, I want to do a book tour, I want to do it all. I have an art department, a kick ass editor, a publicity staff, and many others I don’t know about but who all pitch in to make my book as awesome as it can be.
My friends who self publish have to do all this themselves. I do not envy them.
Now I have one particular friend who is currently self publishing. She has confided in me the amounts of her royalty checks she gets each month. They are substantial. Not a little substantial, but extremely substantial and she makes these amounts off the backs of books that cost the consumer $2.99. Am I jealous of her royalty checks? Yes I am.
But here is the thing.
I have talked to her and I know she feels the pressure to continually produce content. I know how hard she has had to work on not just writing the books , but promoting the books, designing the books, editing the books. I believe she feels a weight of it all slipping away if she slacks on production of new material.
Also, her success is built on a foundation of books that were e-published in her genre by two of the biggest e-publishers out there and an immense amount of talent. She is not the typical self published author.
I have good friends in the industry who are self publishing their backstock of out of print books to good success. I have friends who are doing one of the hybrid publishers where it is a combination of self publishing and stylized traditional publishing. These are all meeting with varying degrees of success.
So to sum up I am with a great traditional publisher and I am very happy for it. It is exactly what I wanted. I already have one business to run completely (Family Tradition Tattoo in Marietta, Ga) I don’t need another one and I will take the help given to me by my publisher. It will make me a more productive writer, which benefits you as the reader.