There is no rule that everyone has to choose traditional publishing. Nowadays, publishing offers many options to writers. You can have complete control over your books if you opt for self-publishing. Self-publishing allows authors to retain all rights and royalties, giving them full ownership and creative control. In contrast, traditional publishing typically involves a publishing company taking ownership of the rights and directing the creative process. Many indie authors sell a lot of books and have a great audience. Independent publishing is worth considering, so let’s examine the pros and cons of different paths you can take as an aspiring writer.
Traditional Publishing Pros and Cons
Seeking a traditional publishing deal is more challenging, although I would be careful with that statement. There are so many things to consider when making the right decision – what is suitable for one person could be entirely wrong for another. Enlisting everything positive and negative of the traditional publishing route can make your decision easier. You will have all the essential information in one place, making it all simple to visualize.
The number of things you need to learn about the publishing industry is overwhelming. Without further ado, let’s discuss it all in the open.
Traditional Publishing Pros
It’s always nice to start with the good things, and when it comes to traditional publishing vs. self-publishing, there are quite a few pros in favor of the first option. Traditional publishing is something that the vast majority of writers seek, and with a reason – traditional publishers definitely have a lot to offer to writers!
Team of professionals to work with
The traditional publishing process is slower than the other option, and for some of us, it takes years even to get an agent. Some writers will only consider publishing traditionally, so the only way to get the publisher is through an agent.
However, some small publishers will accept unagented submissions and consider your work even if the agent does not represent you. It is worth trying if you do your due diligence and ensure it is a respectable publisher.
Still, when you get the agent, you will have a whole agency walk you through the publishing process and put your book in bookstores. Literary agencies are different, big and small. There are many small boutique agencies, and your agent might as well help you edit your book. Many agents are editorially oriented, and they help their authors prepare for submission.
There are also plenty of big agencies that will have a whole team working with you. When you sign up with a publishing house, you get another team of publishing professionals working with you. They will provide you with all the necessary services, such as a book editor and a designer, to make an excellent book cover.
Traditional publishers have teams of experienced professionals, so you will get all the types of editing and a beautiful cover design that will attract the right readers. When you finally have your book published, you’ll get some help putting it into the book market, like book promotion and sales teams working hard to put your book on the bestseller lists.
No upfront financial costs
When you become a traditional author, the publisher covers all the expenses and pays you for your writing. Anyone taking their writing seriously will avoid vanity presses. It would be best if you thought your work was good enough to convince a publisher to believe that. Vanity publishers will charge you for their services, and in return, they will help you publish your works, but they will not help you market your book.
For some, it is also a choice, but no respectable publisher will ever charge an author, and if you are serious about your writing, it is wise to avoid the vanity press.
Sense of validation and prestige
Another reason to go with the traditional publishing house is the highly validated opinion of publishing professionals. Most authors are looking for some validation. Proving your work is excellent and worthy is essential. You need that boost to keep going because writing is not easy and requires much internal writing motivation.
You first get that sense of value when agents show interest and finally offer to represent your work. When the traditional publishing house decides to publish your book, the sense of validation you get is worth all the effort. Then, when the book sales exceed our initial modest expectations, we get that sense of prestige that traditionally published books usually get.
We love it when we see our book in physical bookstores. Every author dreams of getting into brick-and-mortar bookstores, and this is the best way to achieve that goal.
Traditional Publishing Cons
We have been looking at everything good with traditional publishing, but we should also consider its drawbacks. Only when you list some of those will you be sure if you should traditionally publish your book.
Traditional publishing can be very slow
Patience is a virtue, and if you plan to be a traditionally published author, you must master this trait. In traditional publishing, everything goes very, very slowly. It might take ages for you to get your query package right and research the agents who might be a good fit. When you send those queries out, the waiting game begins.
You wait for them to get through the thousands of queries to yours and maybe ask for a full manuscript. If you think you waited for that, guess how long you will wait for an agent to read your full. The actual waiting begins when you finally get an agent and submit it to the publisher. So, for most of us, it will be years before you see your book on the shelves. A few lucky ones will always break the rule, but the key word here would be a few.
To get published traditionally is like reading a slow-burning romance; you must read the whole series to reach the happy ending.
Traditional publishing does not pay new writers very well
If you are in this for good money, you should reconsider while still in the beginning. Publishing companies pay a small amount to new writers since they don’t know the particular book’s outcome. Only when your books start selling will your publishers pay you the big bucks.
Giving up creative control
Another thing to remember is that once you sign that deal, you will give up your control over your work up to that moment. This does not only apply to the decision about the cover design or marketing strategy. We are talking about the title of the book that the publisher will choose and the overall result of the editing that might deviate from the original idea of your book.
Some writers have to agree even to be promoted as a similar genre to increase sales. Unlike the self-published author, you must let others make these decisions. Traditional publishing houses invest in the product they want to sell and will not leave big decisions to the rookie author. Let’s face it: it is only fair to accept it because they will lose money if your book doesn’t sell.
No significant marketing help
One of the biggest mistakes you can make if you want to be published traditionally is to leave all the marketing to your publisher. Every publishing company owns many marketing resources, but they will limit those to the basics for the new author.
As a new author, you might see your physical book in a bookstore, but it will certainly not stand in the front shell or window with Stephen King’s latest bestseller. You will need to do a lot of promoting yourself, like making a brand of yourself, communicating with your readers regularly, and proving to your publisher that you are a team player and that the book deal they gave you is appreciated.
Self Publishing Pros
If you are not convinced you should publish traditionally, you are lucky to live in the modern era. Unlike the authors of the past century, you can self-publish and take control of the destiny of your writing. Did you know that Margaret Atwood started as a self-published author? Or the latest poetry wonder, Rupi Kaur?
Many authors started like this and eventually got a book deal and a traditional publisher. Others prefer to continue having things their way. Self-published books are primarily sold online and may provide authors with a more significant portion of royalties compared to traditional avenues, making self-publishing financially appealing. There are many pros to consider when self-publishing so that we will list only the main ones.
Total Creative Control
When you are a self-published author, you have all the control. For most of us, it is hard to give up. When you are an author and are faced with giving up on your creative power, it often results in the most challenging thing you must do. As a self-published author, you have that control in your own hands, and you get to decide about things like the cover design, copy editing, interior design, formatting, and, a big one, the title of your book. You will not have to consider what the publisher or your agent thinks. You are your agent and the publisher, but that doesn’t mean you can’t hire a professional to help you publish that book.
Profit Control
The other control you have if you decide to self-publish is profit. There is no such thing as big money if you are a new author, but as a self-published author, if you manage to sell your book, almost every penny is yours. Of course, it will not come if you don’t promote your book, so you will be the one to earn it or blame yourself if your sales are not good.
Marketing Control
You’ll also have complete marketing control. Every indie author knows that the book sold is the book well promoted. That means you will have to have a website and maybe a blog, connect with readers via social media and keep in touch with them, promote your new books, organize your blog tour, find a way to communicate with other writers, and become a member of the writing community. Independent publishing means you depend on yourself for everything.
Rights and Royalties
Unlike traditional publishers, who will have all the rights and keep roughly 80% of your book’s earnings, self-published authors get to keep their rights and earnings. Self-published authors will have significant upfront expenses, but consider them an investment that will eventually pay off. If you think that is good news, wait for it because it only gets better. In time, you can move all the sales to your website, which you have been growing since day one. Your royalties will increase, and you can aim at almost 100%. Not only that, a self-published book can earn you money—it could earn you much more than one you publish traditionally. In this case, when it comes to self-publishing vs. traditional publishing, the first is an absolute winner.
Self Publishing Cons
When you decide to self-publish, you will face many challenges, from financial and organizational to professional. Although it seems like a lot, each can be solved, and for those who have entrepreneurial blood in their veins, maybe tackling all these challenges is worth it.
The cost
Instead of the publisher, you will be responsible for everything needed to prepare the book for publication. The cost can vary depending on your budget and your DIY abilities. Every service, like editing or designing the book cover, can cost from a few hundred to thousands of dollars. If you can’t sell enough books, you will lose that money. It is as simple as that.
No acknowledgement
When you self-publish, no one will acknowledge that as an achievement unless you are able to sell thousands of copies of your novel. Unlike traditional publishing, the fact that you made it published by one of the big four is already a big deal. Self-published authors need to do a lot more to get interviewed by respectable magazines or anyone else from the Traditional Publishing world. You are not on their map unless you sell a lot.
No marketing help
Traditional published writers will get some marketing support, and it might not be enough to promote the book and put it on the marketplace, but at least it is something. As a self-published author, you will have to do it all alone. Starting from the website and social media, you’ll need to create a brand and build an audience. If you can invest some money, it can get easier, but still, it will take a lot of effort and constant work.
Difference Between Self Publishing and Traditional Publishing – Cost
The infamous question is: Is self-publishing more expensive than traditional publishing? The answer is not simple. Before we delve into the details, I should underline that the initial investment in self-publishing is substantial. However, it can be returned many times over in the long run.
Traditional-publishing cost
Here is where things go in completely opposite directions. If you get a book deal with a traditional publisher, you will not have to pay for cover, editing, or anything else. Most publishers will cover even some basic marketing expenses. A self-publishing author will have to cover all the costs alone: book covers, formatting, editing, organizing book tours and other book promotions, building a website and an audience on social media, and all the fifty shades of self-promotion.
Self-publishing cost
I heard many questions from fellow writers about how much money one should invest when self-publishing. I would say that the sky’s the limit. You can have a very expensive book cover, a super-star editor working on your book, and hire professionals you like.
If you want great social media content, there is always a good agency that can provide you with those services. You can even hire a marketer to advertise your book on Amazon. Maybe you will not be getting your book to brick-and-mortar stores, but pretty much everything else is an option if you have enough to spend. In other Shakespearian words, “The world is your oyster.”
Examples of famous writers self-publishing
So many authors went the self-publishing route and made it big. LJ Ross sold her addictive thrillers worldwide in more than 7 million copies. Mark Dawson ditched his traditional publisher to take a self-publishing path, and boy, did he make it. And what about the incredible story of Amanda Hocking? You can read all about it here.
The list is so big, and some of them are so famous nowadays that you would never guess that they actually self-published in the beginning:
- Mark Twain
Imagine how tired he was from everything traditional publishing demanded, even back in the 19th century when he decided to establish his own publishing house. Kudos to Mr. Twain and his entrepreneurial spirit, which all authors should nurture and build. Try googling The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’s first publisher. Does Charles L. Webster and Company sound familiar to you? It was founded in New York in 1884 by Samuel Clemens, known as Mark Twain.
2. Margaret Atwood
Fast-forward to 1961, when the famous author decided to self-publish her poetry. For her tiny book, she even received the E.J. Pratt Medal in Poetry at the University of Toronto. After that, her work was always published by big publishers, but she still refers to that first tiny, self-published book as her biggest thrill. The most important lesson here is that she decided to publish her work with no fear of the outcome. She just did it, and the rest is history. Sometimes, all we need to do is overcome the barriers we create in our minds.
3. E.L. James
Regardless of what you think about her work, she is a self-published wonder, one of a kind. Her fan-fiction of the Twilight series she posted all over the web became a trilogy that broke the publishing industry rules and set up new ones by selling more than 150 millions copies of her erotic romance. How’s that for a self publishing start? Think about it.
Traditional Or Self-publishing – Final Word
When you start weighing all the pros and cons and deciding on the best option, remember that you can always change your mind. That’s the beauty of this industry; it offers us, the writers, different choices and an opportunity to try it all. Many authors tried both ways and changed their minds more than a few times throughout their careers. The important thing is to continue writing and creating new books.
In the end, writing is all that matters because being a writer is about what we carry inside, and one way or the other, you have to let it out to the world. Never quit, never give up, and always look for a way to put your book in front of readers. If you manage to be consistent, everything must come eventually, no matter your chosen route.
Suppose you are still undecided on this topic. In that case, Writing With A Twist can help you by covering exciting issues about the publishing industry, the craft itself, and everything else that challenges every writer.