Last week I taught a webinar with Indie It Press that explored the various roads to publication. Here’s a graphic and blog by the great Jane Freidman who explores the 6 kinds of publication options in three categories: advance publishing, no-advance publishing, and independent publishing (and if you aren’t following her as a writer who wants to publish, you should be).
In the seminar I broke the publishing road into four roads: the traditional, the vanity or hybrid, the independent, and the serial.
The Traditional Journey
This road to publishing is paved with a lot of rejection and a bunch of gates to maneuver through. I say this with the pragmatic outlook of someone who travelled that road for 15 years. That’s not to say it isn’t rewarding once you’ve traversed a difficult journey. It’s a long haul. You write the best work you can, you submit to find your first gatekeeper—the agent—and it may or may not happen. When it does, the agent who loves your work will help you shop it to the next gatekeeper, the publishers. This may or may not happen, but the agent is working to make sure it does since they will make 15% of the sale.
When it does finally happen, and you’ve established a contract that articulates your pay (advance and royalties once the advance is met OR only royalties which happens with smaller presses) and your rights (what you can and can’t do with the book and story once the publisher publishes it), it goes to the next gatekeeper——the editor, who will determine what content in your manuscript is marketable. This cycle can take years, but once that book is out in the world, it’s a dream come true! Hopefully, you have a publisher who will help you market the work with publicity and marketing included in the budget, but that isn’t always the case.
The Vanity Press or Hybrid Publisher Path
A Vanity Press is a business that is a “pay-to-publish” model. The vanity press will charge you for editing, cover, formatting, and printing and whatever incidentals it takes to get your book created. They will provide the ISBN which means they will own the rights to the book, but they won’t help your market, distribute or sell it. All of that is on the author. BEWARE the Vanity Press, my friends.
The Hybrid Publisher has taken the vanity press model but has flipped it to create a model friendly to the author who is traversing the publishing road on their own but needs support. Providing the coaching necessary, the hybrid press supports the author through the process. The author then is paying for coaching and services, and while it is still a pay-to-publish kind of agreement, the author retains the rights to their work. There are newer models cropping up that share expenses via contractual agreements that split profits of the work. Do your research and always get referrals!
The Independent Author Road
If the traditional path is a road paved with rejection and a plethora of gates, the independent publishing path is really just a footpath with boulders and a rocky ledge, but it’s widening as more and more people are taking this road to publication. Given that the independent author is doing everything on their own (writing, book rights, editing, cover art, formatting, publishing, distribution, publicity and marketing—and that’s just the eBook and print road), there’s a lot of peeking around those boulders to find authentic players along the independent journey.
There are varied approaches to independent authorship such as being an eBook only author to one who owns their own imprint and is focused on the brick and mortar rest stop. The ability to independently control every decision can be overwhelming, but it can also be a boon. You decide the timeline, the cover art, the market strategy. That means every decision is owned by you, the author, and that ownership is empowering. Ultimately, the biggest factors to consider are time and resources to meet your goals as an author. If you’re doing it well, publishing isn’t cheap no matter which way the road turns.
The Serialized Street
The internet has not only opened up the world of independent publishing, but it has created a variety of ways to get the work out into the world. Some authors are looking at membership sites like Patreon to provide content, like Kindle Vella, Radish, or Wattpad to publish their work. This is free to the author (unless they choose pay options within their accounts), and readers can either access the work free or pay a fee to access it.
Not sure which one is right for you? I have some suggestions:
- Know your “why”. Why do you write?
- Identify your “big picture” dream.
- List what you need to get from the why to the big picture.
Still not sure, keep an eye on Indie It Press. I’ll be running this free webinar again early 2022. In the meantime, feel free to comment on this post if you have questions. If you are sure, or close to certain, check out the offering below to get you jump started on your authorpreneur journey!
Independent Authorship: Pre-Publishing Nuts & Bolts
If you’ve decided to go the Indie Authorship route I will teach a seminar course to guide you on your next steps to be an authorpreneur. This 90 minute course will help you develop a pre-publishing checklist, consider your vision and mission as an independent author and brand in your decision making, and align resources for independent authors to accomplish those tasks before your book sees the marketplace.
Things you’ll learn:
- Editing ins & outs
- The importance and how to of ISBNs (do you need a copyright, too?),
- Applying for the Library of Congress,
- Considering cover art and
- Formatting the book,
- Printing and distribution choices,
- And beginning stages of pre-publishing marketing.
Indie Author Resource
I have a book available that might help you as an independent author, The Indie Author Book Publishing Planner: Navigating indie publishing to establish your brand as an authorpreneur (available on amazon).
