This week's summary is going to be on Alternative Publishing and the wider aspects of this term.
In contrast to Legacy Publishing (the traditional format of publishing) Alternative Publishing can take the form of many different types of publication:
Here, the author ultimately takes on the publication of their title themselves. The growth of digitization (digital technology) has encouraged the expansion of self publishing, although the cost of self publishing is never as low as you think. Authors choosing to self publish will incur costs for:
- Copy editing (DO NOT be your own editor!)
It is estimated that to produce a half-decent publication as a self-publisher, it would cost you around $500.
Businesses such as Smashwords and Lulu are often used by self publishers to help format manuscripts and word documents into eReader formats.
Print-on-demand publishing enables authors to produce physical books to sell in bookshops rather than through large warehouses that stock titles that sell through Amazon etc.
Digitization has lead authors to produce titles quickly and easily as many of the traditional processes are cut out (eg. collation process). Inventions such as the Espresso Machine are a good example of this as authors are able to produce their own title in a physical format quickly and easily. Many self-made publishers have also started up this way.
Vanity publishing is essentially the opposite of traditional publishing.
As usual the author creates the title in manuscript form and sends this to the chosen publisher. The publisher then creates a formatted version of the manuscript and then sends it back to the author. It is then up to the author to distribute and sell the title.
This can be to the author’s advantage as well as their disadvantage depending on how fair the agreement is between author and publisher.
Why is Alternative Publishing a problem for publishers?
- Changes the market predictably
- Bad productions weaken the demand for books as a whole
- Ultimately, publishers don’t like change
