With the debate raging between Amazon and the big publishing houses over ebook publication and price, I thought I'd weigh in on why I chose independent publishing.
First, let me get the big question out of the way....Did I have any traditional publishers interested in my work? Honest answer: No. I didn't even try to find a traditional publisher. Question 2: Are you afraid of rejection? Honest answer: Yes. And I'm too old to deal with the mashugana (how do you spell mashugana, anyway?) MESHUGANA: a crazy person. I don't know what the plural is, so if you know, please pass it on!
The honest truth is that I didn't set out to publish a book. I set out to write one. To finish it. Writing a novel is a journey and it's really easy to give up half-way through. I know. I have a whole file of half written novels. But finishing one was on my bucket list. And now that I'm living my last act, it was time to start crossing things off my bucket list. Or at least try to cross more off than I add to it. So I wrote a whole book, and finished it, and it was pretty bad. But the characters came alive for me. And as I finished the first book, the characters' stories had just begun and I wanted to tell those stories. So I shelved the first one, and started the second, which eventually became The Mystery of Glengarron. And when I was almost done with it, the next one started materializing in my brain. And that's the way this series is coming together. I want to know them and live vicariously through them and see how their lives unfold..
At some point, during the writing of the second book, I started considering publishing. I looked into some traditional publishers and I did some research into self publishing. It all boiled down to my list of pluses and minuses. Traditional publisher: editing and marketing. A publisher has editors that will make sure your book is nearly error free. I say nearly, because I have read books from big publishers that do have spelling or typo errors. But for the most part, they are not plagued with the occasional punctuation or spelling error that self-published books often have. (My own included.) The biggest advantage is that big publishing houses have big marketing budgets and they will use part of that to market your books. That means more sales for the author. The big questions here, though, are how much does the author really get? (Usually around 16%) and how much marketing? And marketing for how long? (A small window of opportunity). The other disadvantage is that the publisher will usually print a small run (around 4,000) books for a new author and if they don't sell, well, sayonara. Book out of print and they still own the rights.
In self-publishing, the author retains all rights. For most markets, the author gets about 70% of the sales in e-book royalties and 40% for paperback and audio. These numbers refer to self-publishing with Amazon. There are companies that will publish your book for a fee (usually several hundred to several thousand dollars) and they will take smaller cuts or none at all.
I chose Amazon for all my books and am piloting three of them through Smashwords, an ebook company that distributes to most other ebook formats. The advantages of using these companies are that the book never goes out of print. The other advantage is that I will continue to collect royalties for my books until 70 years after my death (that is, my heirs will) when my work becomes public domain. That was a big deal to me. The disadvantages include that the author has to do formatting and cover art work themselves (although Amazon has some good tools that help here). Editing requires bugging friends and family to help read the books and having a good understand of the editing capabilities of Word. The big disadvantage is that the author has to market his or her own work. Not so easy and it takes time away from writing. But it is a learning experience. In the next post, I'll discuss the pros and cons of Amazon vs. Smashwords.
As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts or questions.
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