‘Dear Alex’ will be a regular column where I answer the most interesting publishing, editing, and writing-related questions you ask me. I have permission from everyone involved to publish these discussions.
Dear Alex,
I’m finishing up a novel, but I can’t decide what to do with it. Indie, Self, Trad? It’s all confusing. Should I try them in order? Should I modify my book in order to fit one or the other? People say I should try to look for an agent, but if nobody wants the book, I should just self-publish. Is that true? Help!
-S
Dear S,
Lots of people ask themselves the same question, and I promise reaching a decision isn’t as painstaking as it seems. You do, however, have to do one thing right now: stop listening to everyone’s opinion on the matter, especially anyone who uses the phrases “just query a few agents first” or “just self-publish”.
Any information you get, including what you’re about to read from me? Doubt it and research it. If it pertains to what agents are looking for, google search for agent opinions, agent interviews, and agent blogs on the topic. If it’s about self-publishing, look for reader polls. If you want reader reactions, do not even try to poll your Twitter writing community. Writers will give you the answer they *wish* were true, and that will only sometimes align with reality. Getting opinions from other writers is great if you want to know exclusively what other writers think.
So what are indie, self, and trad?
There are three main ways of getting your book published (and many others you’ll discover yourself later), and they’re: Either querying it hoping to land an agent who can help you get a ‘traditional’ or legacy publishing deal, querying it with an independent press, or self-publishing it.
Note: Many self-published authors also use the term ‘indie author’ to describe themselves. While that’s not at all wrong, in that self-publishing is in fact independent of the big traditional publishers, it often makes it confusing to talk about small independent presses as an avenue for publishing.
So, for our purposes, we’re always going to be precise: self = self-published, indie = published through an independent press, and trad = traditionally published.
Before we talk about how you pick one, let’s get a clear idea of the advantages and difficulties of each. But just so we’re clear on one point:
ALL PUBLISHING AVENUES ARE VALID. ALL PUBLISHING AVENUES ARE HARD WORK.
Good. Now that that’s out of the way…
Traditional Publishing
Traditional publishing means you’re going to send your manuscript to agents, hoping they will want to represent you and sell that manuscript to a traditional publishing house.
Advantages:
- You get to work in a team and they all have an interest in your success
- You get to benefit from the publisher’s built-in audience
- Once an agent is willing to represent you for one project, they are likely to do the same for future projects
- Once one project is sold to a publisher, they are likely to request or even contract more
- The process comes with some degree of built-in quality control. It doesn’t always work as it should, but at the very least, it forces you to pay more attention to your work.
Difficulties:
- You will need to work well in a team and give up the desire to have complete control over every aspect of your product
- You will need to work well on deadlines
- You will need to take editing well
- You will, to some degree, be expected to behave professionally
- It will likely take years and multiple projects before you break into this avenue
What it’s best for:
- Authors who hate working alone, are happy to be part of a team, and focus more on the direction of their career as a whole than on the details of each individual project
- Projects that feel like they would fit on a library shelf. The best way to figure this out is to read
Independent Press Publishing
Publishing through an independent press means sending your manuscript out to small press editors directly when they accept unagented submissions. Being accepted means that manuscript, and only that manuscript, would be published.
Advantages:
- You get the support of a press and editor, as well as their built-in audience
- You remain independent and have no obligation to continue with the same publisher, or even in the same genre
- You have more creative freedom than you would with a traditional press; independent publishing tends to take more risks
- You get help with aspects of publishing that might be difficult for you, such as formatting, distribution, and marketing
Difficulties:
- Although you have more freedom, you are still under contract and need to work well in a team. Some publishers may allow you to veto covers or editorial choices, some may not.
- The publisher’s built-in audience may not necessarily be much larger than your own
- You would be expected to help the publisher sell the book, including appearing on podcasts, doing interviews, requesting blurbs, etc. Independent publishing is a team effort.
- Your advance would be small to non-existent, and although your royalty rates might be much better than you’d ever see in traditional publishing, you’re likely not going to sell as much.
What it’s best for:
- Writers who are still finding their voice and don’t want to be married to a genre for a long time
- Stories that do not neatly fall into a genre/bookstore shelf
- Experimental, brave, strange stories; weird formats; anything out of the box
- Writers who want support but would rather avoid the pressure of hard deadlines and a set career path
Self-Publishing
Self-publishing avoids the submission process altogether: you contract whatever help you need on a commission, and publish the book yourself.
Advantages:
- You are the master of your own fate and make your own decisions 100% of the time
- You keep every cent of profit that you make
- You can move through genres and take breaks as you see fit
- You grow your brand and business from the ground up and watch it thrive
Difficulties:
- Working with a professional editor, cover designer, and formatter, would cost you your own money. If you decide to skip these steps, you will have to get very good at doing them yourself. If you don’t, it will show in the results
- If you want to receive critique and quality control, you will need to find a support group of your own
- You will need to do all your own marketing and distribution, and the book will succeed or go unread on the basis of your abilities alone
- You will need to spend a lot more time doing activities that have nothing to do with writing
What it’s best for:
- Writers who cherish their independence
- People who legitimately enjoy other aspects of publishing, like formatting or advertisment design
- People who generally do well on social media and enjoy being the face of their own brand
How do I pick one?
The best way to decide which of these is right for you is to answer a couple of questions as honestly as you can. Then, look back through the bullet points above and see which publishing avenue best fits your answers.
Questions to ask yourself:
- Would I be happy and willing to write many sequels to this book/many books in the same genre?
- Would I be happy to have to write a similar book every year?
- Would I be ok with having no control over my book cover?
- Do I feel able to learn things like formatting or design? If not, can I afford to pay for those things?
- Can I handle rejection at all?
- Would I be happier on a team, or in charge of my own product?
- Do I think I might be interesting in changing genres a lot in the near future?
- Do I feel like I’m good at social media/talking about my book/being in the public eye?
- Would I be ok with slowly growing my brand over years and being the only person responsible for that effort?
- Would I be ok with potentially shelving a book for years/never publishing it?
- Do I want a little room to experiment, but also a little help?
Follow-up Questions
Q: Should I just try all three in order of difficulty?
A: All three options come with their own difficulties, and it would be a lot better to figure out which you’re more willing to face. That said, there’s nothing stopping you from trying to get an agent first, then going for an independent publisher, then self-publishing. You’re just not likely to be as happy with your own path as you would be if you figured out which one truly makes you happy.
Q: Do I need to change my book’s style/theme/ending depending on which avenue I want to pursue?
A: Yes, and no. Ideally, you should write the best book you possibly can in a way that makes you happy, then see what fits best for that book and your specific place on your publishing journey. That said, it’s true that books will do better in traditional publishing if they fit neatly into reader expectations, and into a genre. Basically, if you can easily picture where it would go on a library shelf and which other books would be next to it, it might help you place it with an agent and publisher. Rather than change it after it’s written, consider writing with that in mind if traditional publishing is your dream.
Q: Are all of these options safe?
A: Like any tool, it depends on who is wielding it. Yes, these are all safe, but there are scammers on every path. There are terrible freelancers who can’t wait to take money from self-published authors, and terrible independent presses who will use you to build up their own credibility despite mainly existing only to publish the owner’s work, and presses pretending to be ‘traditional’ but asking you to pay to be published. Be very, very careful.
Q: Will doing one of these mean I can never do the others?
A: Not at all. If you publish a book in one way—say, by self-publishing—that book is now published and very unlikely to ever be picked up by a press or agent. That much is true. However, that absolutely does not stop you from writing a new book and going after a different avenue with the new one. If you get represented by an agent, depending on your contract, that might not stop you from publishing with an independent press in a different genre or under a pseudonym.
Q: Is it true that self-publishing isn’t as good as traditional publishing?
A: No. Any avenue can be as good as the other, depending on how you make use of it and why you chose it. It’s true that there is great potential for a self-published book to be nearly unreadable; nothing stops anyone from publishing their laundry list and the only way you’d know is by reading the sample or looking at reviews. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t absolute gems out there, and trust me, the authors of those are as mad about the laundry lists as the readers are.
Q: What’s a vanity press?
A: A vanity press is a fraudulent press that claims to publish you in the traditional way, but actually asks you to pay them to be published. That’s not how legitimate presses operate. Similarly, agents should not be asking you for money to represent you or look at your work. They receive a percentage when your book sells to a publisher.
Thank you for a well written and informative article. It’s a question I ask myself all the time and undoubtedly asked by most authors.