3 Important things about Traditional Publishing
This post is for people who want to be traditionally published. If you’re down to Indie publish, or are only interested in posting your own fiction online—don’t worry about it!
First things first, traditional (or trad) publishing is when you go through an editor at a publishing house and they publish your book. They also take a hefty percentage of the profits, but handle the editing, cover design, titling, promotion, etc. for you. Sometimes you may also go through a literary agent who will represent you (send your work and advocate for you) to publishing houses.
Indie publishing (independent) is when you do it on your own, also known as self publishing. You have more control, but have to build a team behind you to help you edit, design, format, promote, etc. (or do it all yourself). and it can be difficult to get your book in places like book stores and libraries since they usually only do dealings with publishing houses.
With that out of the way, let’s talk 3 important things I know about trad publishing.
1. Don’t share your work online
If you want to be traditionally published, don’t post any of your work online anywhere. Including little bits and pieces, including excerpts, including characters, including titles. Nothing. Keep it locked down.
This is because many trad publishing contracts will consider you posting your work online as it being “previously published”, and may reject your work for that reason. To be on the safe side, don’t put any of your work online or submit it to other journals/magazines.
2. Be prepared to let go of some of the decision making.
When you go through lit agents and publishing houses, you give up an amount of creative control to get your work published. They just want to make it as good (and marketable) as possible, so trust that they know what they’re talking about.
This means they may choose your title, you may not have any control over the cover image, they might even ask you to get rid of a character or change the ending or any other amount of larger edits. You are allowed to reject some ideas, but choose your battles. Taking this feedback and making these edits is what will get your work published, so if that is your goal, be accommodating, trust that they have so much experience and will make your work better.
3. You should NEVER have to pay them
If you’re paying a traditional publisher to publish your work, you are being scammed. The money works this way:
The reader buys the book for say $20.
To make this simple, let’s say $20 then goes to the publishing house.
They take 50%, so $10 goes to your literary agent (if you have one).
They take another 50% so $5 goes to you.
Never, ever should the money be flowing the opposite direction where you are giving money to these businesses to publish your work. I will say it again, if you are paying these people, you are being scammed.
This is really important, because I knew a girl who was working three jobs to get her work published. They were asking for almost 20K. My heart absolutely breaks for her—she just didn’t know that that’s not how it’s supposed to work.
Whether it’s 20k, $100, or 3 cents. You don’t pay them.
(Of course, if you’re in indie publishing this is a whole different story. In indie, you pay people to do any of the work you don’t want to do. If you need an indie editor, you pay them, if you want an artist to design your cover, you pay them. This rule only applies to trad publishing!)
Anything else important that I missed?
