A Master Guide to the Three Main Forms of Publishing
There are many ways to get published nowadays, but traditional, self, and hybrid are the three most popular, so here’s the gist of what you need to know for each:
This type of publishing goes through a publishing house who often have their own editors, artists, marketing team, etc. to launch your book. They will make your cover for you, format and edit your book, nominate your book for awards and may organize events like a launch party, book signings, speaker roles at festivals etc. They are your book’s team!
Some publishing houses accept cold queries (pitches for your unpublished manuscript) from you, but many only accept queries from agents. Agents are not necessary for traditional publishing, but they can definitely help get you in front of some of the bigger publishing houses. In my opinion, I would recommend an agent for if you want writing to be your career, but would not recommend one if you’re just looking to publish one or two books.
To get an agent, you go through essentially the same process as you would trying to get a publishing house, except you’re sending your query to different agents instead. Querying is very, very difficult, tends to take a lot of time, and will force you to face many rejections. It’s important to be prepared for when you don’t encounter instant success.
If an agent likes your query letter, they may request your full manuscript, and if they like that, they may sign you on as a client. From here, the agent will take over all the work of sending your manuscript to publishing houses. They will also act as your representative to the publishing house, and will protect you from getting scammed or not getting the deal you deserve.
Most important to remember! You never have to pay for any of these services. The money works like this: You write a book, an agent believes in the book so they sell it to a publishing house—the agent takes a cut of those profits and you get the rest (this is called an advance). The publishing house then sells the book to the public, and any profit they make after your advance, they get a cut of, your agent gets a cut of, and then you get whatever is left.
Essentially: these people make money by selling your book, not from you. If you have to pay them for any reason, you are being scammed.
You are not held liable for a large part of the work—marketing, cover art, formatting, etc.
You are more likely to see your book in large resellers (think Chapters or Barnes and Noble), and have it reach a wider audience
You are also more likely to be given further opportunities like events, interviews, or speaker roles at festivals, and you’re more likely to win awards.
You have legitimacy and credibility as an author, especially if you have an agent, to do more books in the future and perhaps move into bigger publishing houses and make larger advances. The longer you’re in the business, the more money you make.
It is difficult as a first-time author, and takes a long time
Some of your creative control is taken from you (you may not be able to choose your own cover or your title, etc.)
Your book must be easily marketable for them to take a chance on you
You will likely not see very much money starting out
Self publishing puts all of the work that a traditional publishing house does on your shoulders. You are responsible for the editing, the formatting, designing a cover, doing your own marketing, applying for awards (if you desire), etc. This means that all creative decisions are entirely up to you, but also, that any mistakes or poor choices reflect entirely on you.
There are many ways to self publish, but lately Amazon’s publishing service seems to be the easiest for authors. In other cases, you may want to design everything and then go to a printer in your area to print off copies to then sell on your website, or try to entice resellers to pick up.
In self publishing, you may have to pay upfront for everything (especially if you hire outside services to do some of the work for you), which can make it an expensive and risky endeavor. However, you also get all of the money from sales.
You are fully in control of the final product
You can publish a book that others may not have seen potential in
You don’t have to share your profit with anyone, you may see more money starting off than a trad author
Your reach to audience is as much as you are able to market yourself (if you have a high social media following, you will sell more than if you don’t)
All of the work is up to you, which can be difficult and frustrating, especially in getting resellers
You may not be given the same sort of opportunities as trad authors
On that note, if you ever want to make the jump to trad publishing, self published manuscripts are sometimes not seen as incredibly legitimate or credible unless they sell amazingly well
This form of publishing takes the idea of self publishing, but hires out some of the work. For example, you may hire a publicity company to do your marketing for you, a graphic designer to make your cover, and an editor to do a proofread, and handle the rest of it yourself. If you desire, you can technically hire out basically every service needed. This can be somewhat of the best of both worlds between trad/self publishing, however, it’s also the most expensive.
You still have a majority of creative control given you are paying the companies to do what you want
A professional can take on some of the tasks that you are not as confident or skilled in
It is expensive—unlike trad publishing, these companies will expect you to pay them upfront for their services, so you are risking not making back the money when your book is ready to sell
You may have to manage a lot of different people and companies—it requires intense organization and deadlines!
On that note, it is also up to you to determine if a company is credible and does good work—just getting any professional is not a guarantee that the work will be high quality
If you have any more questions about publishing, feel free to leave them in my inbox! :-)
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