If I had a dime for every time someone asked me if they should try to sell their book to a traditional (as in large New York) publisher or self-publish (more commonly referred to as independent publisher), I would be a millionaire!

I’m sure an entire book could be written on this subject, and perhaps one day I’ll write it, but in the meantime, let’s go over a few pros and cons of both choices.

The first thing you should consider is that with today’s technology, virtually anyone with the right tools can become an author. This is great news for authors that have a quality book and want to share it with the world.

Let’s start with the pros of traditional publishing. By taking this road, the publisher bears all of the financial risk of publishing your book. They handle most of the business aspects including professional editing, cover design, layout, printing, shipping, warehousing. They have the knowledge and experience to produce good books. Another pro is large publishers have multiple distribution channels (or places to sell your book). Large publishers can get your book into any major bookstore easily and effortlessly.

The bad news is that they take total control of the content and design of your book and the traditional publishing process can take up to two years before you’ll see your book on shelves.

Another con is large publishers don’t do the marketing or promotion that they use to. The author is now expected to have a following (known as a platform) of people ready to buy the book and a solid marketing plan laid out.

Gone are the days of six-figure advances. They just don’t happen anymore. Royalties pay between 5%-10%. So if your book costs $20.00, you make about $1.00-$2.00 per book. We can easily figure out that you’d need to sell a lot of books to live the bestselling author’s lifestyle. First-time authors rarely get the marketing, promotion, backing, or royalties of a well-known, bestselling author.  Those dollars are set aside for authors who are assured to give the publishing house a solid return on their investment. Unknown, or little known authors, don’t have the public appeal to drive mass sales.

Traditional publishers no longer accept unsolicited manuscripts, so the author will have to find a reputable agent to sell their book to these publishers.

On the other side of the coin, independent publishing is the fastest growing segment of the publishing industry.  According to R.R. Bowker, independent publishing titles grew 132% in 2008; whereas, traditional publishing is down 3.2%.

With independent publishing, you get a bigger piece of the financial pie because after your initial expenses, you keep all royalties. In this instance, if your book cost $20.00, your print cost expense might run anywhere from $1.00-$3.00 depending on the volume of your print run. Here you can see that you keep $19.00-$17.00 per book versus the $1.00-$2.00 from traditional publishers.

Another pro is that you have full control of all design and content aspects of the book. Plus you can turn an independently published book around in six-nine months. And with the high quality of some print on demand book services, you don’t have to have a garage or basement full of books. You can order as many or as little as you want.

So what’s the bad news? First, you must pay for all your production costs upfront: editing, design, layout, printing, shipping, promotion and marketing. You should plan on budgeting from $3,000 up to $12,000, depending on your book’s specifics.

Second, you’ll have a harder time distributing your book the traditional way (i.e., brick & mortar bookstores). As an independent publisher you’ll need to put on your business and marketing hat and get creative with ways to promote and sell your book. Fortunately for you, the Internet offers a wide variety of avenues for you to do this. You can also hit the speaking circuit and give talks, workshops, seminars and sell your book at these events. Libraries and schools offer another avenue.

As you can see, whether you choose traditional publishing or independent publishing, there will be challenges on either path. Take advantage of the many books and resources available to help guide you through the process.

If all of this is overwhelming, contact me. As a master virtual author’s assistant, I am trained in helping writers take their manuscripts to publishing success.

Karen[at]VandEServices[dot]com

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 at 9:08 pm and is filed under Authors, Publishers, Writing Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.