Which Publishing Path Is Best?
There are several ways you can get your book published—traditional publishing, hybrid, and self-publishing. But one of the most common questions among authors is: which publishing path is best? Is there one avenue that will assure you greater success as a writer, result in larger sales, or promise a longer career in the publishing industry?
Although there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer here, we do have some things for you to consider as you plan out your publishing journey. If you’ve spent much time around our blog, you know how important we think it is to make a business plan to help you articulate and map out your journey as a writer, and that is certainly key when it comes to deciding which publishing path to embark upon.
But, ultimately, the best publishing path is the one that can get you to your goal most efficiently and effectively. No one method of publishing is the best or perfect, but one avenue will fit you best based on your goals, skills, and needs. And so we have a few pros and cons for you to consider in each type of publishing as you begin planning your publishing career.
Traditional Publishing
When people think about book publishing, their mind often goes straight to traditional publishing. Traditional publishing is great, but it isn’t for everyone. Oftentimes authors can get a bit blinded by the perceived glamor or clout that they feel will await them when they traditionally publish a book. So let’s talk about the realities of traditional publishing, and you can decide if it’s the best route for you, your book, and your writing goals.
A quick summary:
Traditional publishing is when a publishing company helps create, publish, and distribute your book. Oftentimes authors get a traditional publisher thanks to the help of a literary agent. The publishing house buys the rights to your book for a set amount of time. The specifics of how you’re paid will vary from publishing house to publishing house, and contract to contract, but typically you get a lump sum or an advance, that is often broken up into pieces throughout the contract (for instance, a third of your advance on signing, a third on completion of the manuscript, and a third on your publication date).
In addition, you’ll get a portion of your royalties from each book sold. Some publishing houses and publishing contracts break your advance into four payments, and others include language for an additional advance like an “earn-out bonus” when your book’s sales exceed the amount you were paid in your advance in a certain amount of time.
Pros:
You truly get a publishing team that circles around you and your book. The specifics of what this team will look like can vary based on the publishing house and your book, but it’s standard to expect to be paired with an editor who will walk through the editorial process with you and your book, publicists, and marketers to help get your book into the hands of readers, designers to format and design the interior and cover of your book, and a sales team to help get your book into the online and brick-and-mortar retailers. In essence, when you decide to traditionally publish, once you sign on the dotted line, your publisher will create and pay for your publishing team.
Many of the larger publishers have created programs to engage readers and reviewers, and your book would have access to any of those programs. And unlike working in the self-publishing sector, you don’t have to worry about vetting the skills of the professionals because the publisher did that when they hired them! Additionally, if there’s a problem that arises in your publishing journey, you don’t have to sort it out yourself, but instead, you can reach out to your agent or your publishing team to help find a solution.
A publisher’s distribution strength will vary from publisher to publisher, but typically you’ll have much stronger publishing power when traditionally publishing than self-publishing. Your publisher’s sales team and distribution center will help you brainstorm common sense as well as some unusual sales outlets to stock your book. Their distribution center will also be able to more efficiently and quickly meet reader demand.
In addition to whatever free author copies your contracts allow, most publishers offer some sort of an author discount to purchase additional books beyond your free author copies. If you’re an author who does speaking events, your sales rep can not only help you purchase your books, but can sometimes even help arrange to get the books to your event in a more streamlined way than you’d encounter if self-publishing.
Any ancillary products you want to create to support your book, once approved by your publisher, will easily have consistent packaging and marketing. Additionally, you’ll have the brain power of your publisher to partner with you to help create a product that makes sense for your book and will engage readers.
Even if you only sign a publishing contract for one book, most contracts have something called a “first look” clause that gives the publisher the opportunity to hear about your next book idea before you shop it elsewhere. That means that even when your contract is over, you have an easy avenue to continue the publishing relationship without having to go through the rigamarole of the querying process again.
Cons:
Although it might feel great to say your book was traditionally published, traditional publishing has its downsides. The first is that you work on the publisher’s timeline, and oftentimes that timeline might feel a bit slower than you’d like. It’s not uncommon for a book to take at least a calendar year to hit the marketplace, and on the flip side, the pressure increases if you find yourself struggling to meet deadlines as you and your editor work through revising your book.
Although publishers can certainly push a book’s release date when it’s called for, it’s not a given that your book’s publishing date can roll back, and at a certain point, the publisher can choose to part ways with you if the delay becomes too long.
Additionally, depending on your contract, you might not have much say on what your cover looks like or your book’s final title. Although every publishing house wants their author to like their cover, unless there is language in your contract giving you the final say in your cover, when an author and a publisher are at an impasse, the publisher can make the final call.
Just because you’ve got a team of marketers and publicists working for your book, that doesn’t mean that you’ve got some massive marketing and publicity budget to work with. You’re definitely expected to help pull your own weight in the marketing space, both with ideas, time, and money. Most first-time authors have a smaller marketing budget to work with, but most first-time authors will not be as high priority as those big-name, best-selling authors. That means that you might also have to brainstorm ways to market your own book, foot the bill, and handle some of the details yourself (depending on the bandwidth of your marketer).
A traditional publishing contract doesn’t mean you instantly have the income to quit your day job (in fact, it’s pretty common for most authors to at least have a side hustle alongside their writing to help make ends meet). Not only are advances smaller for the average writer, but royalty percentages given to the author can be around 10 percent to 25 percent of a book’s list price (the specifics of royalties vary by contract and publishing house, of course), meaning it can take some time to make any real money. And depending on your book and your publisher’s plans, if your book doesn’t “backlist well”, or sells consistently for a long time after your pub date, your royalties can drop off significantly after the first year. If you have an agent, a portion of what you’re paid will also go to an agent. Some publishing houses require authors to be represented, and some do not, but generally, you’re going to want an agent if you’re traditionally publishing, as they can not only help you navigate negotiating the best contract possible, but they can be your advocate in any dispute.
In the unfortunate event that your book doesn’t sell well or you run afoul of either a personal scandal or a massive cultural event, your publisher also has the right to cancel your book before your publishing date, cancel a run, or decide to no longer distribute copies of your book.
Finally, the rights to your book belong squarely in the hands of the publisher, which can be tough to work around. Your publishing contract will tell you how long the publisher retains those rights and the process you must go through to petition for your rights back. However, while the publisher owns the rights to your book, that means any ancillary products you want to create for your book aren’t a given. If your publisher rejects the idea for an ancillary product, sometimes they can clear you to create the product on your own, but sometimes they can simply refuse the idea and that’s the end of it until you get your rights back.
Self-Publishing
Self-publishing can take a lot of different forms, which we’ll break down, but in essence, self-publishing is where the author is in charge of most of the publishing process if not everything. Hiring professionals like editors, designers, marketers, and publicists is your job, but in return, the author often owns most (if not all) of the rights to their book and gets most (if not all) of their royalties. Still, there are a few nuances to the self-publishing journey, so let’s break those down.
Fully Self-Published
This means you, the author, are in charge of everything. You take care of everything from the writing of the book to the editing, the formatting, the cover design, marketing, and publicity. It’s all you!
Pros:
You’re in control of everything, and because of that, the financial cost can be negligible because you’re taking care of everything if you don’t count your time. Although the cost of your time and your labor is greater, that time and skill investment likely comes back to you in the form of retaining all rights to your book and pocketing every cent of royalties from book sales.
Cons:
The stigma of self-publishing comes from the amount of subpar books on the market, either in the caliber of writing, the obvious lack of editing, or the cheap-looking cover design. The likelihood of any human possessing the time and skill to edit a book well, design a great cover, market a book well, and do everything else in between well is pretty small. That’s a lot to ask of one person! Because you’re fully responsible for the marketing, publicity, and sales of your book, delivering a subpar product will not only hurt the reputation of your book, it will also impact sales. And spinning so many plates means that you run a much higher risk of burning out.
Self-Publishing with Paid Assistance
Self-publishing with paid assistance means that you handle what you have the time and skills to handle, and you contract everything else out to professionals.
Pros:
Any contractor you hire has no rights over your book and no share in your royalties. So you fully control the workflow and publishing process, retain full rights and all of your royalties, and are able to partner with a professional to make sure your book really shines in the marketplace because you can collaborate with them to take full advantage of their publishing and marketplace knowledge. This means you can feel extra confident in whatever choice you make as you move through the publishing process because you have the expertise of your team to lean on.
Cons:
Assembling your publishing team is fully up to you. That means you have to vet a professional’s skills and decide if they will be a good partner for you. If you end up partnering with someone who does a bad job, has to drop out of the project, or simply turns out to be a bad partner, it’s up to you to figure out how to rectify the situation and find another professional, if needed.
Although you can propose a timeline to your publishing partner and decide to not work with someone if they can’t meet your deadline, ultimately you’ve got to work with them to create a project timeline that works for both of you. If your project timeline expectations are unrealistic, or if your dream publishing partner has a lot of projects on their desk, it might mean that getting your book on shelves might take longer than you expected.
Additionally, you have to foot all of the costs for these professionals, often before your book is published. That means making an investment and hoping that you’ll be able to recoup the costs in a timely fashion, and there is no guarantee that will happen.
Self-Publishing with Paid Assistance and Royalty Sharing (aka Hybrid Publishing)
Some publishing partners will take a fee upfront and agree to share some of the royalties of your book sales for a period of time to recoup all of their costs.. No two hybrids are alike, as they can vary greatly on what specific services they offer, and some also get ownership over some of your rights, while others don’t.
Pros:
Royalty sharing might make you wince, but that payment structure does often mean that a hybrid can remove some of those upfront costs required in self-publishing. Additionally, a hybrid publisher can often grant you a bit of that “publishing team” feel that you get in traditional publishing. Depending on what package you purchase and the hybrid itself, you might have access to their editors, cover designers, and even some sales and marketing folks. After all, the hybrid has a vested interest in the sales of your book (especially if they’re getting royalties), so they want it to sell well! Some hybrids also have a pretty broad network, so they can be a powerful ally in obtaining blurbs, a foreword, and promotion opportunities. There are also some hybrid publishers that are a part of a traditional publishing arm or a traditional literary agent, which means they often view their authors in hybrid publishing as potential for traditional publishing in the future.
Cons:
Unlike working with a contractor, when you work with a hybrid, much like working with a traditional publisher, you’re tied to them until the terms of the contract expire. So if they aren’t a good match for you and your publishing goals, you’ve either got to ride out the storm, or explore options for buying yourself out of the contract. Another way hybrids can feel like a traditional publisher in a negative way is in the way of author control. Depending on your contract, you might not have complete control over your cover or titling.
As we’ve said before, it’s pretty common for hybrids to take a portion of your royalties. Although it can indeed lessen the blow of upfront costs, it’s not always the best option for every author because they might not have made the most favorable deal on their royalties. In addition to royalties, some hybrids will retain some of your rights. Things like international rights, merchandising, or film/TV rights are common ones that some hybrids retain, which, like a traditional publisher, limits what you can do with your book outside of the initial book release.
If a hybrid is retaining some of your rights, if they are taking some of your royalties, and especially if they’re charging you an up-front fee on top of all that (something traditional publishers do not do, we might add), proceed with extreme caution. It doesn’t necessarily mean the hybrid is up to no good, but you want to always be sure you fully understand your contract and you’re fully comfortable with that agreement. Having a lawyer look over your contract before you sign is a great way to make sure you fully understand what things they’re keeping, what they expect from you, and what specific services they will be offering in return.
There is a lot to consider when embarking on a publishing journey, and we’re always happy to talk through your project and see if we might be a good fit for you. If you want to talk about your book and the way we might be able to partner, don’t hesitate to reach out and schedule your free, one-hour consultation today!