The difference between traditional publishing and e-publishing wallowed into my forebrain recently. The differences between them are fairly large. For instance, there are much lower barriers to entry with e-pub than trad-pub, but the market penetration is not as great. With trad-pub, you not only have a much broader reach and more distribution choices, you also have a team to work with you and make sure the right story gets out the door and that the right people see it. This is great, unless, of course, you’d rather do it yourself and keep all the money. But in the end, I think the real difference has to do with the mindset of the author – are you a person who wants to write, or are you a person who wants to have written?
The person who wants to be known as ‘a Writer’, will usually be happy with one book out in the wild that they can put on their shelf at home and point to and say, “I did that.” It’s bragging rights. E-pub is perfect for people like that. This is, after all, an event – not a career. Good, bad or indifferent, you wrote your book. That’s done – check. On to skydiving, or a Bob Ross painting course or whatever. Next.
The other kind are people like me, the people who have something they need to say and want to get it out in front of as many other people as possible. This type is more concerned that their book shows up on the shelf next to Robert Ludlum and Nora Roberts. Don’t misunderstand me, this is not necessarily the type that dreams of Bestseller status or stacks of money. That seems more like a pleasant accident or literary prostitution – take your pick. Most of us just want to be seen and be out there where people can pick up our book. In any event, this type is usually best served by trad-pub.
Neither road is perfect, they both have their pluses and minuses. It’s very difficult to break into traditional publishing. There are only five major publishers in this country, and each only publishes a few thousand titles per year. The smaller houses print far less. Many authors spend years trying to be ‘discovered’. Most won’t be. And even if you do manage to get published by one of the big houses, fame and fortune are not exactly assured. Most new books sell fewer than ten thousand copies – the average is around five thousand. And that’s considered a successful book.
Conversely, Kindle publishes millions of new books every year, and they’re just one of many e-publishing outlets. The trouble is, there are so many books for readers to look at and buy, that most books sell between a dozen and a few hundred copies, if any. There are too many choices – no one can ever see them all. And while e-pub outlets are willing to help you get the word out about your book, it generally costs you something to get this help. Your other option is to be your own advertising and marketing team. This is certainly a viable option; I know people who do it. But it is one hell of a lot of work. You end up spending so much time pimping your book that you run out of time to write the next one.
The point is, you have to decide which road is right for you. Don’t decide based on your level of fear or your personal prejudice – take the road you must take to get where you want to go. And be prepared to do the work necessary to get the level of reader response you want.
I already have a couple of books out in the wild, on Kindle. If you ask me nice, I might even tell you where to find them. But personally, I think I’m going to try the trad-pub route. The reason is simple – even if each book never sells more than ten thousand copies, it’s a better shot at getting my ideas out there than Kindle has given me so far. That, and my stories come in groups and series.
For instance, I have three series currently under construction (one is actually split in two). My fantasy series about the world of Eregai looks to be truly huge. It has a large cast of characters and covers between 15 and 20 years of narrative. My science fiction series (or is it two?) covers a great deal more territory and a longer span of time. My ‘modern fantasy’ series also has a large cast, but really only follows a few characters closely. Its time scale is in terms of decades. I probably have less than a tenth of any of these stories actually committed to files. I have a lot of work ahead of me.
And that’s the other reason for me to go the trad-pub route. There’s so much work to be done in just the sheer writing of this stuff, that I don’t really have time to devote to being my own marketing agency. I’m going to have to do some of that, of course, you can’t get away from it anymore. But I don’t have the time to worry about self-promotion. I need others to promote me and my work – which is something that trad-pub does well. So, I’ve done e-pub and, for certain books, I will probably do it again. But I feel I need to give much of my work a much broader audience.
Right now, I’m trying to finish work on the opening book in my fantasy series, Sonata in the Key of Magic for Three Voices. Once the first couple of edits are done, it will be time for me to start querying literary agents, which is the first step in getting a book traditionally published. Wish me luck. And good luck to you as well, if you are planning on publishing a book – no matter which road you finally choose.
pax et ama
bcd