I don’t feel like being creative today and write something witty right off the spot. Instead, I am going to post an argumentative that I wrote in my English class. This argumentative was all about the pros and cons of both self publishing and traditional publishing. Considering that there are quite a few blogs and articles about what is best for writers, I thought I would throw my two cents in. This is just a compilation of some of the research I conducted on the subject, I hope you enjoy.
Exploring the Unknown with the Known
Growing up, I wasn’t the type of girl who wanted to find my prince charming and be whisked away to a happy ending; no I wanted to be an explorer of unknown places. First it started out as wanting to be an astronaut, they were the ones who got to explore the great unknown and dance among the stars. Then the dream came closer to home as I tried to emulate my mother by becoming a scientist; you know those people in lab coats who discover new and interesting things everyday, those people who save the world one invention and discovery at a time. Finally my dream settled on becoming a writer, in truth it is the best of both worlds. I get to discover new and interesting places that no man has seen before, while saving countless races through the act of story telling. However, while doing research on how I should publish my potential works I stumbled upon an interesting argument that spanned the Internet. Should I self-publish or go through with traditional publishing? As I dug deeper, I found that there were different ways to self-publish, specifically subsidy, print-on-demand (POD), and through the Internet. I have found myself leaning towards traditional and Internet self-publishing, to be truthful considering POD and subsidy really don’t do much for beginning fiction authors.
All things in the world have a stereotype; such as, all Americans are obese, all high school students are irresponsible, all lawyers are manipulating snakes, or all minimum wage workers are high school dropouts. Most stereotypes are far from being right, but people will still stereotype, and as a result traditional publishing has the stereotype of producing flawless, perfect pieces of work. This is assumed because there is a group of professionals working on one book. In this team, an author has an agent whose job is to “always to get you the best deal possible. This means financially the best deal, as well as a good strong contract where your long-term interests are protected” (Gardner). The agent makes sure that the publisher treats the author correctly and doesn’t try to scam them out of a complete masterpiece. With a group of people working on one book, the quality is going to be better no matter how you look at it.
One of the rumors spread in concealed coffee shops by authors everywhere is that you need street credit before catching the eye of an agent. This deters many aspiring authors away from traditional publishing, because they believe they don’t have a snowball’s chance. Mandy Hubbard would very much disagree. Hubbard, an author and literary agent, says in her blog, Getting Published – Even if You Are a Nobody, “There’s a big misconception in publishing that a writer has to “know somebody” or have substantial writing credits in order to get an agent, and thus, get published”. Many authors will get this credit by writing for various magazines, blog sites, or starting their own blog. Hubbard conducted an informal poll on twitter, and found that “MORE than 90% of those writers snagged an agent with the tried-and-true query letter” and “Only 6 people got their agent via a referral from a client or impressive credentials”. Hubbard, with her impromptu poll, found that agents would respond to query letters even if the author doesn’t know someone on the inside or has amassed writing credit. Rachelle Gardner, a literary agent, agrees with Hubbard on the subject of writing credit. She states in a blog entry, Myth Busting – Part 1, that “While having an “in” helps, and networking can be quite effective, it’s not necessary nor is it the only way to break in. Many agents and publishers take on new writers through queries”. Having two literary agents have the same viewpoint on writing credit seems to make this into more of a truth than a rumor. Having writing credit is good, especially if you are not quite comfortable with your writing, but it is not everything. Most authors, in my opinion, who network and write for various sites, magazines, and newspapers, are trying to assure themselves that what career path they choose is the correct one. I also think it helps their self-esteem if they think they have a better chance of getting an agent by hoarding writing credit.
The anxiety of getting an agent boils down to the author wanting to get their book published with a good publishing house. Who better to go to than the people who know the publishing business inside and out? Agents don’t bite, and they are, as Gardner puts it, there to help the author anyway they can. Of course, Hubbard does admit “most agents request 5-10% of the queries they read and only offer rep to a scant few”. This brings a big drawback to traditional publishing, instead of having their book published, authors have to wait weeks on end for an agent to get back to them or spend their time getting rejection letter after rejection letter. The reason that agents will take on a manuscript is if they think it will sell. Say that the books being sold in the millions are about zombies, and an author tries to send in a manuscript about a love story between a human and an elf. There is a good chance that they will be shot down. That reason alone is why some authors turn to self-publishing.
Time is always an issue. People are either running out of time, have too much time on their hands, or have just enough time. One of the main reasons authors turn to self-publishing is time. No matter which direction of self-publishing someone turns too, it will always be faster than traditional publishing. Where traditional publishing to take up to a year to get everything finalized for a book, self-published authors could have their book published and out in stores in a couple of months. Unfortunately, self-publishers have to worry about money, they don’t have the luxury of getting an advance when they self-publish a book. All the money they make on sales goes directly to them; instead of, a percentage going to the agent and publisher.
It has become decidedly cheaper to self-publish if an author decides to go down the route of eBooks. Self-publishing authors can sell their eBook free of cost to them on Amazon, which has seen some big success stories. Being a free publishing platform, self-published authors are able to cut the cost of publishing a book. However, the accessibility of the Internet has helped with the low quality stereotype of self-publishing, since this allows for anyone to publish their book. Joe Barlow writes in his blog post, Three Sad Truths About Writing for the Internet, “The heinous bastardization of the English language that has come about in the wake of cell phone texting, drunken Internet forum posts, and millions of barely comprehensible blog entries devoted to asinine activities like feeding one’s cat, has led to a gradual dumbing down of language, and (even more tragically) an accepting of this fact by the general public”. With the help of the Internet, and possible lack of an editor present, the general population will look down on self-publishers. However this is not completely true, especially with those who take pride in their work and make sure it is the best quality that it can possibly be.
Evelyn Lafont, a self-published eBook author, wrote about the process she took in self-publishing her book The Vampire Relationship Guide, Volume 1: Meeting and Mating. Of course the first step for her was writing the book, and editing it herself, but after that she sent the manuscript to be professionally edited by BubbleCow, and proofread by Christine LePort. She then had it professionally formatted by 52Novels, and a book trailer made by a video company. Even though her book was published now, she still had to market the book, “I threw a launch party on Facebook which was well attended, I started a 40-some odd website book tour and (through the book tour and other means) reached out to about 35 reviewers. I also recently released a press release with a local focus.” After finishing all this, she was rewarded with a sale of $101.35 for the month of April. Lafont took extreme pride in her work and made sure that people knew about it. She also put a lot of work into making sure her book was as perfect as it possibly could be. Instead of having an agent take care of all the work behind the book, Lafont took an initiative with her self-publishing and made sure that she did marketing and editing. Right there is the benefit of having a team working on a book instead of just one person taking over all the work. However Lafont may have waited ages for an agent to get back to her about her book. Lafont writes on her blog that she would not have changed a thing if she could go back, and feels rather relieved for self-publishing her book in eBook form.
Self-publishing, like traditional publishing, has the stereotype of being sloppy, unedited books that most people wouldn’t waste the time of day on. This stereotype comes about because there is just the author doing all the work, as opposed to traditional publishing where a group of people work on getting the book sold and advertised. Of course, there is always a diamond in the rough and some self-published books are worth reading. Self-publishing doesn’t have the benefit of making money right off the bat, especially with subsidy and POD self-publishing where “you pay for all the publishing costs, which can easily be over $10,000” (Lond). Even with the most of the money coming to the author, an author who publishes either POD or subsidy has to raise the price of their book to give whoever published their book a percentage. Unlike publishing with eBooks where all the money from sales goes to the author, POD and subsidy authors have to give some of that money to the publishing company that published their book. This raise in price, which is “set a price a few dollars higher than the prices charged for traditionally published books”(Cramer), can be the difference of a customer buying a book that is published by a POD and subsidy author or buying a book that is traditionally published. There is also the downside that most retail bookstores don’t stock POD and subsidy published books because they are not returnable. With traditional publishing “if the books don’t sell, bookstores can “return” them for credit. Returning a mass-market paperback actually consists of stripping the cover and sending it back to the publisher and discarding the rest of the book”(Ammann). POD and subsidy publishers have a clause in the contract with bookstores that states that their books are nonreturnable. This puts pressure on retail bookstores, since if the book doesn’t sell well than they have books taking up shelf space that could be used for books that are actually making them money.
But wait, are POD and subsidy publishing the same or do they have differences? POD and subsidy publishing do have a couple of differences between them when it comes to these self-publishing routes. POD is basically an author who sends their manuscript to a publishing house, the publishing house then keeps the manuscript as a digital copy and prints out books only when the author has need of them. This saves the author money and space wherever they are living. However, POD publishing houses aren’t always the best quality, the ink is potentially shoddy and so is the cover art. If the print quality is not up to some readers’ standards could lose the author sales. Like with eBooks, POD authors have to market the book themselves; it doesn’t do anyone any good if the author has a book that they POD but never let see the light of day. Plus if you aren’t willing to market your book, why are you publishing again? The upside to POD publishing is “If the topic of your book covers a specific region or a local attraction, with its appeal limited to people living in that area, you may be able to sell enough copies at local events to make it worth using the print-on-demand method” (Cramer). This of course means that if you already have a niche and know that the book is going to sell, you have the option of POD and actually making a profit.
Subsidy publishing is a little bit more like traditional publishing. The subsidy publisher helps the author with getting cover art and editors cheap while also publishing their book. However, authors have to keep an eye on subsidy publishers a tad more than POD publishers, because there are quite a few scams relating to subsidy publishers. Plus, some subsidy publishers offer to market your book for you, with additional cost to yourself. Subsidy publishers may be rather helpful, but most of the revenue goes to them, while they pay the author royalties. This sounds an awful lot like traditional publishing; however, traditional publishing doesn’t have you pay fees to get your book published.
The roads that I suggest to all beginning authors is either publishing the traditional way or go with eBooks. Both are hard roads to travel but are more productive to the author than POD and subsidy self-publishing. POD and subsidy self-publishing give you the control and time, but the quality isn’t all that good depending on how much you are willing to pay. They allow you to explore small niches that are beneficial to you as an author that would be over looked by traditional publishing. On the other hand, traditional publishing and eBooks reach more readers than POD and subsidy will ever reach, especially if you are good at marketing.
Being an author is never easy, not even those who make it big had an easy time. JK Rowling started out writing on napkins in coffee shops because her heat was out, Brian Jacques wrote stories for blind kids, and John Flannegan’s stories started out as disjointed bedtime stories for his son. All these authors started somewhere and made it big. They chose to go the traditional route, while authors like Albert Berg and Evelyn Lafont are making their mark on eBooks. These authors chose their routes and are sticking to them. They are what I want to aspire to be when I grow up.
Works Cited
Lond, Laura. “Pros and Cons of Self-Publishing”. Googobits.com: Independent Articles and Advice. N.P. 10 June 2005. Web. 4 May 2011.
Hubbard, Mandy. “Getting published– even if you’re a “nobody.”. WordPress.com. Habbard, Mandy. 23 March 2011. Web. 4 May 2011.
Lafont, Evelyn. “Self-Published Author Announces First Month’s Sales” WordPress.com. Lafont, Evelyn. 1 May 2011. Web. 4 May 2011.
Barlow, Joe. “Three Sad Truths About Writing for the Internet”. Coffeehousewordsmith.com. Barlow, Joe. 14 April 2011. Web. 4 May 2011.
Gardner, Rachelle. “Fears about the Publishing Process”. Blogspot.com. Gardner, Rachelle. 27 April 2011. Web. 4 May 2011.
Gardner, Rachelle. “Myth busting – Part 1”. Blogspot.com. Gardner, Rachelle. 14 March 2011. Web. 4 May 2011.
Cramer, Kris. “The Pros and Cons of Print-on-Demand Publishing”. Kriscramer.com. Cramer, Kris. Web. 20 May 2011.
Ammann, Lillie. “POD: Part 3 – Pros and Cons of Using a POD Subsidy Publisher”. lillieammann.com. Ammann, Lillie. 31 October 2007. Web. 20 May 2011.
Rough Draft 