6 ms·

> But that's not even the case anymore - many traditional publishers expect you to market your own work and build your own following. They won't spend marketing

by chii 3y ago

> But that's not even the case anymore - many traditional publishers expect you to market your own work and build your own following. They won't spend marketing resources on most writers they sign. so is the only reason for using a traditional publisher is the cash advance then?

drakonka 3y ago
For most authors the advances are pretty laughable, too. There is a very small percentage that publishers throw all their weight behind, offer generous advances to, marketing resources, etc. The rest of those they sign are more like "filler". I can't speak for all writers, but here are a few reasons I have seen some authors going with a trad publisher: * Reputation. It can just feel cool to say "Oh yeah I have a book published by Tor" (or whatever). This one is pretty weak for me. Trad publishers don't hold that much special prestige anymore. * Translations. There are some great untapped translation markets out there (like Germany). Some authors self-publish the English version of their books and sell translation rights to a publisher. The publisher then does the work of translating and republishing in the target countries, taking that effort off the author. The royalties are lower, but funding high-quality translations can cost a fortune and for many authors offloading that cost and effort can be worth it. * Audiobooks. Similar to translations. Author may publish the ebook themselves and sell audio rights. Good narrators can cost a fortune, and many authors can't justify that outlay themselves. A trad audiobook publisher can get access to the best narrators and fund the entire production if the author doesn't have the means or desire to do it themselves.
- kasey_junk 3y ago
  I’d add (for fiction the only market I have exposure to): - the editor: if a good traditional editor gets involved in your project they can make a huge difference in the quality of your books. Many people seem to think editors are just marking up your punctuation. In reality they are more akin to product managers in software. They help set the tone of the books and ensure that the vision is adhered to. - which leads me to copy editors. The traditional publishers employ all the best ones. You can hire independent copy editors but their quality is a crapshoot. And you don’t find out until it’s too late. - the sales rep network. If reps like your book they will get it in front of people. Independent of marketing the boots on the ground factor can make a huge difference. Now, you won’t necessarily get any of these benefits going with a publisher but you can’t get any of them self publishing.
  - bachmeier 3y ago
    > if a good traditional editor gets involved in your project they can make a huge difference in the quality of your books I've also heard about mediocre editors that waste a lot of author time, and bad editors that ruin the project.
    - ghaff 3y ago
      My developmental editor for my semi-technical book was “fine” but he didn’t do any of the structural re-factoring I did for my second edition. The company was using a new set of copy editors for the second edition and they were much better than the first. Overall I can’t really complain about the editing but I think the benefits were relatively modest.
  - stubish 3y ago
    The major publishers seem to have gutted their editing staff over the last decade or so, and submitted manuscripts changed little before publishing. The primary editor you get barely has time to read it, and an outsourced copy editor (who are probably the better ones, yes).
- sjfjsjdjwvwvc 3y ago
  Do you think I could offer English->German translation services to indie authors as a reasonable side income? Do you know a good place to get to know them or start out building some connections? I have been doing it in the past (mostly for ads and other marketing content) but it paid very little (was working freelance for an agency) but I enjoyed it a lot.
  - drakonka 3y ago
    To be honest I'm not sure. It seems like _a ton_ of work to put out a high quality translation. I do not know how much time and money translators spend on each project but can imagine it being a lot. For example, some authors may expect a legit highly-paid translator to work with their own German proofreader etc to ensure quality of the output. (Tangentially, I think Germany has some special laws that you as the translator would need to be familiar with. For example I think the translator needs to grant rights to the original author to republish the work. Not 100% sure on this, but worth checking!)
    - sjfjsjdjwvwvc 3y ago
      Unfortunately there is not much information for this online (atleast from a quick search I didn’t find much) Most seems to be related to working together with publishing houses (I loathe the German publishing houses so that’s definitely no option). I would prefer working directly with an independent author - when I have a bit more time I’ll check out how to best get in contact with them. Not sure about the legal side of it, but I have a friend who works in German copyright and who could probably help figure that part out.
      - drakonka 3y ago
        One place to get started might be the Alliance of Independent Authors: https://www.allianceindependentauthors.org/ https://www.allianceindependentauthors.org/ They are author as opposed to translator-focused, but maybe reaching out to them can be a first step in getting the lay of the land? They might have some information about how their authors tend to use translation services. Although I'm sure there must be some translator communities out there that could provide even more focused info.
- falcolas 3y ago
  > Audiobooks ... Good narrators can cost a fortune To be specific, between $200 and $300 per finished hour, and a finished hour is about 9,000 words. It can cost more if you want two or more narrators to handle male/female parts (there's a lot more editing involved). I know at least one self-published author who does create audiobooks for some of their works, but does so at a loss. Even at $15 per audiobook sale (through bookfunnel, so there's little overhead), making back the $3k they pay for the narration is a pretty high bar for a relatively niche market.
- wharvle 3y ago
  > * Reputation. It can just feel cool to say "Oh yeah I have a book published by Tor" (or whatever). This one is pretty weak for me. Trad publishers don't hold that much special prestige anymore. I think it's a validation thing, largely. If you get trad-published but the book does poorly—well, at least you got trad-published, so you must not be too awful (although... if you're in certain "hot" niches, there's some real crap put out, that looks like it was barely even edited), but your book just didn't land well. It happens. But you're an author, for sure. If you self-publish and your book doesn't do well—did you market poorly? Would it have done better with a trad publisher? Are you... in fact so terrible at writing you shouldn't call yourself an author, and it didn't sell because it's total crap? You may never know! Since there's not real, real money in it unless your book's such a hit you get movie deals and such (with rare outliers who make it big-enough purely on book sales but don't get adaptation interest) it's largely about being an author, so having that validation up-front has real appeal.
sturz 3y ago
It's probably the prestige. Most new authors are likely subsidized by their wealthy families.
- kasey_junk 3y ago
  Most new authors are subsidized by their day job. It’s a huge moment in an authors life when they start making money exclusively from writing. A moment most never get to.
  - cableshaft 3y ago
    Same deal with most board game designers. The vast majority are subsidized by their day job, and aren't ever going to make serious money from designing games. I know a guy, for example, that worked two years in his spare time on one game, got picked up by a publisher, ended up in Barnes and Noble and was considered a success by the publisher (they even requested and released an expansion), and the guy got only $9,000 in royalties (with no advance) for all his efforts. Pretty much the only people making enough money for it to be their sole form of income are either hired directly a publisher or are out there hustling constantly and signing like 8+ game designs a year, or have insanely cheap cost of living (one game designer mentioned how he made net income of $12k one year and was able to survive off that because they live super cheaply), or have somehow landed on a massive evergreen hit, like Azul or Carcassonne. [1] https://twitter.com/JPacCantin/status/1647455444884156417 https://twitter.com/JPacCantin/status/1647455444884156417
- ryanklee 3y ago
  > Most new authors are likely subsidized by their wealthy families. You think most new authors have wealthy families? That is a very odd assumption, given how hard it is to write a book... and given how low the returns are... and given how many other ways there are to achieve prestige... and given how little people regard authorship these days as a measurement of it... and given how unlikely it would be for wealth to have an outsized representation in a career generally associated with poverty... and how all old authors were once new authors which would imply that most of them are wealthy too, which, not so.
greenie_beans 3y ago
a traditional publisher will distribute your book through all of their sales channels. if you self-publish, it's very hard or near impossible to sell your book at a proper bookstore. the sales reps will also push the books onto independent booksellers, who might love the book and want to handsell it.
IKantRead 3y ago
> only reason for using a traditional publisher is the cash advance then? A few really important things come to mind: - Editing. I'm not talking about mere copy editing which you can get done reasonably cheaply, but rather having an editor that is reading through everything and giving feedback is hugely important. - Layout and printing of the book There's a lot that happens between writing and having a polished book in your hands. You can contract all this out but it adds a lot of work. - Distribution. While the burden of marketing a book has increasingly fallen upon the author these days, if you want your book to be on the shelf at your local Barnes & Noble, then your much better off going with a traditional publisher. - Prestige. Like it or not, the vast majority of people on Earth still look down upon self publishing. For some types of books this is less important: technical books and fantasy fiction books can go without in many cases (but if you want to use your book for credibility in something like consulting you'll still want a traditional publisher). But if you want to write on a serious topic it helps a lot to have an academic press publish your work, or if you want to really pursue writing literature you at least want some publisher that is recognized in your relevant community. Currently I think the only really good use cases for self publishing are the fantasy fiction and niche technical book markets assuming you already have an audience. And even in those cases there are plenty of reasons to go with traditional publishers over self publishing.
- jrmg 3y ago
  Not sure why you’re getting so many downvotes. The first two are definitely real issues with a lot of self-published work.
  - drakonka 3y ago
    I did not downvote, but just wanted to mention that the first two do not require a traditional publisher. In fact none of them do, but especially not the first two. It is true that there are real quality issues with a lot of self-published work because you don't _need_ an editor to publish your book. Heck, you don't even need to do a self-edit pass. Write it and hit publish! But it is increasingly an expectation that you have one, because quality expectations are extremely high, especially for competitive money-making genres. I started out self-editing and now pay for three professional edits for each release: developmental, copy, and proofread. Professional editors are not exclusive to traditional publishing houses.
julianeon 3y ago
No. I think the actual answer is "real-life SEO." Say you have a Mexican restaurant in NYC. There must be hundreds of them, right? But imagine that someone in NYC googles "Mexican restaurant," and your restaurant is the first search result that comes up. That's worth a lot of money. Self-publishing is like opening your own restaurant, while being published by a major publisher is like being on the first page of Google. When, say, CNN wants someone to be a panel expert, they might call you. You can get invited to conferences on the strength of that credential, and then build up to greater opportunities from there. In essence you've been socially validated. That's worth quite a lot of money, though it's up to you if it's worth the cost. If you didn't have any fame going in, then I think it will be.

by chii 3y ago

drakonka 3y ago

For most authors the advances are pretty laughable, too. There is a very small percentage that publishers throw all their weight behind, offer generous advances to, marketing resources, etc. The rest of those they sign are more like "filler". I can't speak for all writers, but here are a few reasons I have seen some authors going with a trad publisher: * Reputation. It can just feel cool to say "Oh yeah I have a book published by Tor" (or whatever). This one is pretty weak for me. Trad publishers don't hold that much special prestige anymore. * Translations. There are some great untapped translation markets out there (like Germany). Some authors self-publish the English version of their books and sell translation rights to a publisher. The publisher then does the work of translating and republishing in the target countries, taking that effort off the author. The royalties are lower, but funding high-quality translations can cost a fortune and for many authors offloading that cost and effort can be worth it. * Audiobooks. Similar to translations. Author may publish the ebook themselves and sell audio rights. Good narrators can cost a fortune, and many authors can't justify that outlay themselves. A trad audiobook publisher can get access to the best narrators and fund the entire production if the author doesn't have the means or desire to do it themselves.

kasey_junk 3y ago
I’d add (for fiction the only market I have exposure to): - the editor: if a good traditional editor gets involved in your project they can make a huge difference in the quality of your books. Many people seem to think editors are just marking up your punctuation. In reality they are more akin to product managers in software. They help set the tone of the books and ensure that the vision is adhered to. - which leads me to copy editors. The traditional publishers employ all the best ones. You can hire independent copy editors but their quality is a crapshoot. And you don’t find out until it’s too late. - the sales rep network. If reps like your book they will get it in front of people. Independent of marketing the boots on the ground factor can make a huge difference. Now, you won’t necessarily get any of these benefits going with a publisher but you can’t get any of them self publishing.
- bachmeier 3y ago
  > if a good traditional editor gets involved in your project they can make a huge difference in the quality of your books I've also heard about mediocre editors that waste a lot of author time, and bad editors that ruin the project.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    My developmental editor for my semi-technical book was “fine” but he didn’t do any of the structural re-factoring I did for my second edition. The company was using a new set of copy editors for the second edition and they were much better than the first. Overall I can’t really complain about the editing but I think the benefits were relatively modest.
- stubish 3y ago
  The major publishers seem to have gutted their editing staff over the last decade or so, and submitted manuscripts changed little before publishing. The primary editor you get barely has time to read it, and an outsourced copy editor (who are probably the better ones, yes).
sjfjsjdjwvwvc 3y ago
Do you think I could offer English->German translation services to indie authors as a reasonable side income? Do you know a good place to get to know them or start out building some connections? I have been doing it in the past (mostly for ads and other marketing content) but it paid very little (was working freelance for an agency) but I enjoyed it a lot.
- drakonka 3y ago
  To be honest I'm not sure. It seems like _a ton_ of work to put out a high quality translation. I do not know how much time and money translators spend on each project but can imagine it being a lot. For example, some authors may expect a legit highly-paid translator to work with their own German proofreader etc to ensure quality of the output. (Tangentially, I think Germany has some special laws that you as the translator would need to be familiar with. For example I think the translator needs to grant rights to the original author to republish the work. Not 100% sure on this, but worth checking!)
  - sjfjsjdjwvwvc 3y ago
    Unfortunately there is not much information for this online (atleast from a quick search I didn’t find much) Most seems to be related to working together with publishing houses (I loathe the German publishing houses so that’s definitely no option). I would prefer working directly with an independent author - when I have a bit more time I’ll check out how to best get in contact with them. Not sure about the legal side of it, but I have a friend who works in German copyright and who could probably help figure that part out.
    - drakonka 3y ago
      One place to get started might be the Alliance of Independent Authors: https://www.allianceindependentauthors.org/ https://www.allianceindependentauthors.org/ They are author as opposed to translator-focused, but maybe reaching out to them can be a first step in getting the lay of the land? They might have some information about how their authors tend to use translation services. Although I'm sure there must be some translator communities out there that could provide even more focused info.
falcolas 3y ago
> Audiobooks ... Good narrators can cost a fortune To be specific, between $200 and $300 per finished hour, and a finished hour is about 9,000 words. It can cost more if you want two or more narrators to handle male/female parts (there's a lot more editing involved). I know at least one self-published author who does create audiobooks for some of their works, but does so at a loss. Even at $15 per audiobook sale (through bookfunnel, so there's little overhead), making back the $3k they pay for the narration is a pretty high bar for a relatively niche market.
wharvle 3y ago
> * Reputation. It can just feel cool to say "Oh yeah I have a book published by Tor" (or whatever). This one is pretty weak for me. Trad publishers don't hold that much special prestige anymore. I think it's a validation thing, largely. If you get trad-published but the book does poorly—well, at least you got trad-published, so you must not be too awful (although... if you're in certain "hot" niches, there's some real crap put out, that looks like it was barely even edited), but your book just didn't land well. It happens. But you're an author, for sure. If you self-publish and your book doesn't do well—did you market poorly? Would it have done better with a trad publisher? Are you... in fact so terrible at writing you shouldn't call yourself an author, and it didn't sell because it's total crap? You may never know! Since there's not real, real money in it unless your book's such a hit you get movie deals and such (with rare outliers who make it big-enough purely on book sales but don't get adaptation interest) it's largely about being an author, so having that validation up-front has real appeal.

sturz 3y ago

It's probably the prestige. Most new authors are likely subsidized by their wealthy families.

kasey_junk 3y ago
Most new authors are subsidized by their day job. It’s a huge moment in an authors life when they start making money exclusively from writing. A moment most never get to.
- cableshaft 3y ago
  Same deal with most board game designers. The vast majority are subsidized by their day job, and aren't ever going to make serious money from designing games. I know a guy, for example, that worked two years in his spare time on one game, got picked up by a publisher, ended up in Barnes and Noble and was considered a success by the publisher (they even requested and released an expansion), and the guy got only $9,000 in royalties (with no advance) for all his efforts. Pretty much the only people making enough money for it to be their sole form of income are either hired directly a publisher or are out there hustling constantly and signing like 8+ game designs a year, or have insanely cheap cost of living (one game designer mentioned how he made net income of $12k one year and was able to survive off that because they live super cheaply), or have somehow landed on a massive evergreen hit, like Azul or Carcassonne. [1] https://twitter.com/JPacCantin/status/1647455444884156417 https://twitter.com/JPacCantin/status/1647455444884156417
ryanklee 3y ago
> Most new authors are likely subsidized by their wealthy families. You think most new authors have wealthy families? That is a very odd assumption, given how hard it is to write a book... and given how low the returns are... and given how many other ways there are to achieve prestige... and given how little people regard authorship these days as a measurement of it... and given how unlikely it would be for wealth to have an outsized representation in a career generally associated with poverty... and how all old authors were once new authors which would imply that most of them are wealthy too, which, not so.

greenie_beans 3y ago

a traditional publisher will distribute your book through all of their sales channels. if you self-publish, it's very hard or near impossible to sell your book at a proper bookstore. the sales reps will also push the books onto independent booksellers, who might love the book and want to handsell it.

IKantRead 3y ago

> only reason for using a traditional publisher is the cash advance then? A few really important things come to mind: - Editing. I'm not talking about mere copy editing which you can get done reasonably cheaply, but rather having an editor that is reading through everything and giving feedback is hugely important. - Layout and printing of the book There's a lot that happens between writing and having a polished book in your hands. You can contract all this out but it adds a lot of work. - Distribution. While the burden of marketing a book has increasingly fallen upon the author these days, if you want your book to be on the shelf at your local Barnes & Noble, then your much better off going with a traditional publisher. - Prestige. Like it or not, the vast majority of people on Earth still look down upon self publishing. For some types of books this is less important: technical books and fantasy fiction books can go without in many cases (but if you want to use your book for credibility in something like consulting you'll still want a traditional publisher). But if you want to write on a serious topic it helps a lot to have an academic press publish your work, or if you want to really pursue writing literature you at least want some publisher that is recognized in your relevant community. Currently I think the only really good use cases for self publishing are the fantasy fiction and niche technical book markets assuming you already have an audience. And even in those cases there are plenty of reasons to go with traditional publishers over self publishing.

jrmg 3y ago
Not sure why you’re getting so many downvotes. The first two are definitely real issues with a lot of self-published work.
- drakonka 3y ago
  I did not downvote, but just wanted to mention that the first two do not require a traditional publisher. In fact none of them do, but especially not the first two. It is true that there are real quality issues with a lot of self-published work because you don't _need_ an editor to publish your book. Heck, you don't even need to do a self-edit pass. Write it and hit publish! But it is increasingly an expectation that you have one, because quality expectations are extremely high, especially for competitive money-making genres. I started out self-editing and now pay for three professional edits for each release: developmental, copy, and proofread. Professional editors are not exclusive to traditional publishing houses.

julianeon 3y ago

No. I think the actual answer is "real-life SEO." Say you have a Mexican restaurant in NYC. There must be hundreds of them, right? But imagine that someone in NYC googles "Mexican restaurant," and your restaurant is the first search result that comes up. That's worth a lot of money. Self-publishing is like opening your own restaurant, while being published by a major publisher is like being on the first page of Google. When, say, CNN wants someone to be a panel expert, they might call you. You can get invited to conferences on the strength of that credential, and then build up to greater opportunities from there. In essence you've been socially validated. That's worth quite a lot of money, though it's up to you if it's worth the cost. If you didn't have any fame going in, then I think it will be.