Monday, January 21, 2008

Understanding traditional publishing

Right before I was given a traditional contract, I'd decided to do cooperative publishing. I'd actually submitted to Living Waters because I'd heard they had a cooperative program. I was actually shocked to get a traditional contract and an advance.

During my latter research, I found a new trend that makes authors more money in the long run. Through various research outlets, I found that many authors are moving into cooperative and self-publishing for various reasons: less wait time for release; to keep editorial and creative control of their work; to make more money from their book sales.

To all aspiring authors, before you count out cooperative publishing as vanity and unwanted, you may want to visits these sites:

http://www.marketingsource.com/articles/view/3909

http://www.jorlanpublishing.com/traditionalpublishing.htm

http://www.writinghelp-central.com/write-book-problems.html

http://hubpages.com/hub/Self-Publishing_Benefits_Outweigh_Traditional_Publishing

These are just a few sources of accurate information. Ultimately, it doesn't matter how you get published if you are fully invested in the marketing of your book. Help your publisher help you. Be prepared to work, and know that vanity does not mean untrustworthy. It means an alternative route to my dream. But ultimately, we know that traditional publishing is a great way to save money upfront and get into the stores. But, either way, stores will return your book if readers are not interested in them. Don't over-rate anything! Do your research!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is certainly not the information that floats around the net. Now, I'm on a mission to learn more information. The groups I'm a part of say that nothing is better than traditional, royalty-based publishing. Now I find that every option has it's drawbacks. Thanks for the info, sis.

Anonymous said...

Traditional publishing will always accomplish one thing the others do not afford: the author doesn't have to pay one red cent! You can never beat that. If that means I make less in the long run, then so be it. I'd much rather 5% net of a book with no money out of my pocket than 15% when I'm paying something toward publication. I guess I am old fashioned. I like it the old way and that's my thoughts.

Lea Schizas said...

Thank you for the informative post. One of the comments makes it obvious that the reader has no clue that the pocket change at times might be as low as one hundred dollars. Regardless, every writer has the option of choosing their paths, as many big name authors have done in the past to establish themselves in the beginning.

The quaility of the book, content and cover, will be judged at the end according to the promotional and marketing energy you put into it.