I’m not even kinda interested in traditional publishing. When I finally get around to publishing The Portal & the Panther and its sequels, I’ll be headed straight to Amazon.
I think that many of the writers I know, along with most of your average readers, will think that’s a silly decision. “Self-publishing is like saying a movie will be released, ‘directly to DVD.’ You’ll be telling readers that your work is second rate, that you can’t make it in the world of traditional publishing.”
Nah. Used to be true. Not true anymore.
You’re free to disagree if you like, but here’s my “Top 5” list of reasons why I could care less about traditional publishing:
1. We’re around the corner from an era in which e-readers will do to the publishing industry what MP3s did to the music industry.
When MP3s started to dominate over CDs and other forms of music, the music industry had to scramble to adjust its paradigm to the new world order. The same thing is happening right now with books. As much as I like hanging out in bookstores, that’s not where I buy books anymore. I only buy books for my Kindle app on my iPad, and I know a lot of other people are in the same boat that I am. While I’ve probably bought a couple dozen Kindle books in the last two years, I can only think of two actual, printed books that I’ve bought. Paper books might not go extinct for many, many years (probably not in my lifetime), but the day is coming soon when most books are purchased as ebooks.
2. The ebook royalties you get when you’re a traditionally published author are miserable compared to what you get as a self-published author.
According to these numbers over at Smashwords, a traditionally published author is going to get about 50 to 70 cents per ebook they sell. By comparison, a self-published author selling his or her book for $3.99 is going to get about $2.40 per book. Um, hello? And on top of that, some people think that indie authors are going to dominate the ebook market by 2020.
3. If you take the time to market your work and build your fan base, you can easily earn more as an indie author than as a traditionally published author.
Now don’t get me wrong — not all indie authors are multi-millionaires like Hugh Howey. Plenty of indie authors will never make it out of complete obscurity. (And I’m really hoping I won’t end up being one of those! We’ll see.) But there are also plenty of indie authors out there who are making a very decent living writing, marketing, and publishing their books. There’s a great article about this topic on Brenna Aubrey’s website, where she discusses why she turned down a good deal from a traditional New York publishing house and published her book independently instead.
One number I read not that long ago caught my eye: You can make $50,000 per year by selling 75 books per day. That’s a lot of books every day — not a ton, but a lot for a new author. However, if you build your brand as an author and keep putting books out there consistently, that’s a doable number. For example, if you get to the point where you’ve published 10 or 12 books, you could sell about 7 per day and have a solidly middle-class living from your writing. As a matter of fact, more indie authors are earning a living wage these days than traditionally published authors.
The hard part, of course, is getting to 10 or 12 readable, likable books, so stop reading this post and go get writing! — No, wait. Finish the post first.
3. And then there’s the time factor.
If I were to stick to my 1,000 word per day goal, I would write 365,000 words per year. Since I write in the young adult genre and have a goal of 70,000 – 80,000 words per book, that means that I could conceivably write as many as 5 books per year. Even if I only wrote 500 words per day, which is totally doable, I’d still write 180,000 words per year, which is at least 2 books every year. As an indie author, I can get those books out there as soon as I’m done editing them. If I were to go with a traditional publishing house, they could buy the rights to my book and sit on it for YEARS. This happens to authors. Call me impatient, but I’d rather put out a couple books per year and start getting readers right away than having to wait on a publisher for a year or more to get around to publishing and marketing my book.
4. You don’t own me.
When you sign on with a traditional publisher in the United States, you’re selling the rights to your creative work. You more or less have to do what they tell you to do if you want to ever see your book in print. That means going with their choices on cover art, their editing choices, etc. It’s almost as if they hold your novel — your baby! — hostage. Contracts you sign could also mean that you owe them additional books on their schedule. Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll keep the rights to my own creative process, thank you very much.
5. I’m a hermit who doesn’t wear pants.
No, that’s not exactly true. I definitely wear pants. When I leave the house.
I got this phrase when researching this topic from a 2012 post on KBoards by an indie author. Her point was that you don’t have to be a marketing genius to be a successful indie author; you can even be a hermit who stays at home all days and doesn’t wear pants. When I read that, I was like, YES. That is for me. I don’t want to go on book tours. I don’t want to be Stephenie Meyer or JK Rowling. Heck, I don’t even want to be Philip Pullman. (No, not true: I DO want to be Philip Pullman.) I just wanna write stories, have a few people enjoy them, and earn some money doing it.
But I don’t want to have to go outside and I don’t want to have to wear pants to do it.
photo credit: thekellyscope via photopin cc