Another Perspective on Self vs Traditional Publishing

This item - Self-Publish or Not? - written by Harold Underdown strongly suggests that you consider traditional publishing for a number of very clear and sensible reasons.

Let's be honest here - the rise of inexpensive self-publishing options is going to mean one thing above all… we are going to be deluged in a tidal wave of fifth rate, poorly-written, rubbish. The high barrier to entry that kept out all those who weren't truly committed to the craft has dissolved and, as we've seen with music, every dog and their master are going to take a swing at it. This means that a very few brilliant works that might have been mistakenly passed over by the traditional publishing world will get their day in the sun. But it means that we will also see a general dumbing down of the overall quality of books, and a simultaneous massive increase in the number of titles tossed into the world. Brace yourself.

So why didn't I pursue a traditional publisher more thoroughly? There were many reasons why I wanted to put it into the hands of a publisher. I've touched on a number of them already - their established distribution and promotional channels, the amount of my time and effort required to promote a self-published book effectively, the credibility that comes from an established publisher. One thing that I didn't mention was editing. I know my writing is not as good as it could be. Even authors famous for their style and quality have editors. Robertson Davies had an editor. Having someone make suggestions for ways to improve my book would have been greatly accepted - indeed I would have made it a condition of anyone publishing the book.

A few uncommon factors pushed me to self-publishing. One of the key issues was topicality. Much of my book describes universals - people's behaviour in unusual circumstances, being young and full of piss and vinegar, popular music - but it's also quite rooted in a specific band. At some point The Dreadnoughts will cease to be a working band, and from that day forward my book will have a different tone and relevance. There is an eager audience in their current fan base, and I would be foolish to ignore that. Waiting to publish ran the risk of turning the book from topical to historical.

Much of non-fiction will be affected by this to some degree. Fiction is not tied so directly to the real world. A novel won't necessarily date itself so much by waiting for a year or two. Indeed, it may benefit greatly from the extra time to consider and revisit the writing.

It's also important to note that I have been around independently produced and promoted music for most of my life. I feel at home in that world. I'm more comfortable approaching an independent record shop about having them stock my book than I am in approaching a literary agent. For that matter, I know where the record shops and how they work are but I don't have the faintest clue where or how to find an agent.

Every time I read This Place Is Awesome again, I find little pieces I might have phrased differently or things I might have expanded on. I wouldn't go so far as to say it was a mistake to push the book out so "quickly" (let's be fair, it did take two years), but I do think I will take a bit more time with the next project. I can see now in hindsight, how and when to go back to my writing and read it with a more critical eye. But even extra time spent pouring over my next manuscript won't be as good as a professional editor. Chances are, I will look into hiring someone. And that's just another cost to factor into a self-published effort.

I am not a self-publishing fanatic, and the point of this blog is not to talk you into it. There are times when putting time and effort into traditional channels is going to be the more logical and productive choice. Underdown's article does a nice job of putting that argument forward and is worth the read.

One thing that Underdown doesn't touch on is the idea that you could conceivably start with one and move to the other. If you self-publish first you will learn in a hurry how difficult much of a publisher's task really is. That may persuade you to chase down a traditional publisher the next time around. Hell, you might even get six months into your own project and say "to hell with this", put your dreams of a book tour on hold, pull in all your consignment copies, and go back to looking for a traditional publisher.

This is a new era in publishing that we're heading into, and while the chaos and uncertainty of it all can be unpredictable and difficult to navigate, it does mean that the rules of play are in flux at the moment. I don't imagine there's any reason why you couldn't be independently promoting and selling your book on a small, local scale, while pitching it to an established publisher for a larger deal. If it's a good book then your ability to sell 100 copies locally ought not cannibalise another publishers sales in any meaningful way.

Of course much of this is speculation on my part. I welcome comments from anyone with real world experience in these matters.

If you do decide to take a stab at traditional publishers, I would recommend The Writer's Market. My mentor and early-encourager slapped this meaty tome on the table the first day I met her and said "here is your homework." It's full of templates for submissions and cover letters, lists of publishers and agents, and tons of other useful information. As I will be exhorting in an upcoming post, you have everything to gain from making other people's jobs easier.

Will my next book be self-published or will I pitch to traditional publishers? I won't hazard a guess at this point. As far as I'm concerned, the answer to this question is going to be "it depends" for a quite a while.

Self or Traditional Part 2 - The Answer

In August of 2011 I had what I believed to be a complete manuscript in my hands. I'd revised and fussed over it, on and off, for months. I was back in Vancouver with no project for the foreseeable future, so I pulled it back off the shelf (well... let's be honest here. I exhumed it from the landslide of papers that surround my desk) and started to look for people to submit it to. Then I went to a party.

It was a sunny afternoon and time for E's yearly backyard birthday party. Also at the party was a local author that I knew was friends with the hosts and had seen at some of their other events. I had wanted to speak to him for ages because I really enjoyed his books and found him an entertaining speaker when being interviewed. Finally the introduction came and we all settled into a very pleasant chat. 

I asked how his books were doing and he started talking about his experiences and the publishing industry in general of late. I could have substituted "music industry" or "movie industry" for "publishing industry." The comments were all very familiar.

"Everyone is afraid of losing their jobs. No one wants to be seen to be taking risks. Everything is a rehash of things that were successful before. The budgets are shrinking every day. No one is sure what to do about the new technologies. Piracy and self-publishing is eating away at the traditional publishers." Of course I'm paraphrasing. Hopefully I haven't said anything here that he didn't say and doesn't agree with. My point is this - as music and movies have gone, so goes the book world.

I wasn't particularly surprised, but it did seem an opportune moment to ask the question that had been dogging me for months.

"So if, say, one were hoping to publish one's first book, would you recommend that one self-publish or look for a traditional publisher?" And yes, I did put it in the royal third person. I didn't want to ask "what do you think I should do?", I wanted to get a more general impression. It was clumsy, but it seemed to do the job.

His response was "go with the self-publishing." There was no hesitation in his voice.

He said - and I'm paraphrasing from ancient memory again - that even if you do manage to get extremely lucky and get picked up by a publisher, there was a good chance that they wouldn't give it much attention, and as soon as the numbers started to die off they would relegate it to their back catalogue or let it languish. It would take a long time to get started and odds were extremely good that my time in the limelight would be breathtakingly short. He felt it was better to do it yourself, and that one would likely earn more money from selling a few copies and keep the bulk of the proceeds, than selling a few more through a publisher and only getting a tiny fraction. If it became a huge success there was fun and money to be had, but for a new author without some kind of pre-existing public interest it was just as likely to become a huge success as a self-published book.

As it happens, I had recently become aware of a BookBaby - a new division of the venerable CDBaby. CDBaby is well know in the independent music community as a business that manages the process of getting your indie music release into places like the iTunes Music Store, and managing all the messy contracts and accounting. For musicians they've been a god-send. You send them a few copies of your CD, they handle everything and cut you a cheque whenever something gets sold.

BookBaby was promising the same thing. Send them the manuscript and they would convert it to the various eBook formats and get it onto the iPad, iPhone, Kindle, Nook, and Sony eReader.

I made the decision. Given that there was no reason why I couldn't pull a self-published title back and give it to a "proper" publisher later, should someone show an interest, I figured that there was absolutely nothing to lose in getting the book out there as an eBook without further hesitation.

What I didn't anticipate at the time was how much easier it would be for this particular book to be produced as a physical book than an eBook. Of course the story is hardly over at this point, but so far the "real" book has been much more rewarding than the eBook for me as the author.  This has as much to do with the eBook format as anything else. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The next few stories will be about my experiences with on demand printers and BookBaby. Stay tuned.

Thank you for your kind attention.
Adam

The "Self-Published or Traditional Publisher" Question

The first question on my mind, as I held the complete manuscript in my hands, was whether or not the subjects of my book - a Vancouver clusterfolk cider polka punk band called The Dreadnoughts who had become good friends over the years - would be okay with the content. I printed up copies on my laser printer for all five of them and asked them to read it and give me their thoughts. To my slight surprise they were all completely okay with it, just the way it was.

The next question was whether it was actually good enough to bother other people with it. This is one of my basic difficulties in being a writer - it's such a solitary pursuit that it can be difficult to know how others will take to what I've created. I sought approval from a number of people - a couple of friends, a couple of published authors that I liked, and, most significantly in the end, the sister in law of an old friend who works in the publishing industry. It was she who most enthusiastically said "yes, this is already better than some of the stuff I see coming across my desk." I already felt that what I'd done was "good enough", but this was the encouragement I needed to make me feel like it wasn't just an exercise in narcisism to pursue it.

And that led me to the next big question - to self-publish or to seek a traditional publisher.

In my head I knew that self-publishing was definitely an option, that it was something I could start on immediately, and that I can choose how much energy to put into it. But I also suspected that it would be a lot of work, and work of the kind at which I was not particularly adept. It would involve a lot of promoting myself and trying to be the centre of attention. For years, as a music photographer, I had taken it as one of my guiding principles NOT to be noticed. The irony is that I'm a six foot tall, middle aged, white guy with dreadlocks down to his waist - I can be hard to miss. But somehow I've learned to move around crowds without being distracting. If I was going to make the book a success I would have to turn that around completely and find a way to talk people into being interested in me and my book, and do it without becoming the kind of self-aggrandising schmuck that I hate.

I also suspected that the quantity of the task ahead, not just the quality, would be difficult. Self-publishing means you are responsible for all the business activities - managing stock, accounting for money, publicity and promotion, delivery, fulfillment, Web sites, speaking engagements, talking to the media, and much more. It seemed like a herculean task.

A traditional publisher, on the other hand, already has their network in place. They have systems for accounting and fulfilment, they know and are known by the media, they have sales channels, and those sales channels may well be unavailable to an independent author. Having a "proper" publisher meant I could concentrate on the part I enjoyed most - writing and talking. I could let someone else shout about how great I was and how wonderful my book is, and I could just look bashful and say "aw shucks." It's true that between the publisher, the distributor, and the retailer, most of the proceeds of each sale would disappear long before my pittance arrived, but they would also be taking all the financial risk. Less money, but for a lot less hassle.

In the I end I decided that I would rather get to work on the next book than spend all my time trying to find ways to beg people to sell, and then beg other people to buy, my first one. Oh, and one more thing - I felt (and still do) that having a book published by an established publisher, even just a small one, gives the book a degree of credibility. Any boob off the street can self-publish a book these days, but for a company to get behind it and put resources into promoting it sends a clear message that it's not just the author and their mother who thinks it's worth the time.

And so, with the generous help and guidance of my new friend in the publishing industry, I started writing up proposal and sending out the manuscript. It's a lot of work just to do that. Every publisher seemed to have their own magic recipe for putting together a submission, and I understood that the process of getting a publisher can literally take years. With the publishers I was looking at, I wouldn't even know if they were merely interested for six to twelve months.

I sent the book off to six publishers who I thought might be a good fit and then things came to a screeching halt when my mum fell ill and died rather unexpectedly. The book went back onto the shelf for the second time.

What happened next changed my mind about the self/traditional approach, but it wouldn't happen until I'd seen my mum off, gone to Poland to tour with The Dreadnoughts again, made my first music video, gone to Chesapeake Bay to attend a friend's wedding, and finally returned to Vancouver again in the summer of 2011.

To Be Continued...