As a published nonfiction author and a novelist-to-be, I have experience with research, book publishing, and promotion, both hard-copy and electronic.
I've learned and found inside-baseball facts and observations that are generally not mentioned.
Here are a few to sit you straight up:
Self-publishing and publishing through Amazon's CreateSpace are viable ways to see one's book in print or on ebook readers.
Yes, the established publishers are still trying to figure out exactly how to handle this competition, and get a piece of this for their own profit and survival.
Yes, Amazon is a powerful presence in the world of books.
Consider these few points, however:
There is a difference between printing and publishing, and one or the other may be the route to go, depending on your personal situation, wants, and needs. And experience. Few understand the fine-line difference.
CreateSpace, and other self-publishing systems, offer a buffet of services one pays for up-front, costing anywhere from several hundred to several thousand dollars. They're one of several self-publishing businesses, and the best-known. If you're in a position to pay for whatever you want and need, or provide these yourself, and if your in a position to make educated business decisions about font, format, cover art, distribution, and marketing, this may serve you perfectly. If you're well-established, comfortable financially, and have a book idea you want to get out on the market, you may want to take this route, as Deepak Chopra just did. Or, if you want to get a handful of your books out as gifts or to learn the experience or to take a bet on a possible best-seller, this may work for you, too. The options are usually ebook, and some form of print-on-demand.
Sure, you'll earn money all along (possibly), and that may help you pay for more services and bankroll later projects, and you may make more per copy on a percentage basis, but you should start to notice something creeping into this argument.
Imperfect, crazy, and sometimes dysfunctional as established publishing may be, it does offer a few things that you may miss when self-publishing.
People who'll lead and not follow.
First, if you have an agent, you have someone on your side, a cheerleader, a market-savvy and business-wise partner and advisor, to run interference and make open-field tackles for you. Sure, they'll cost you a percentage, but a good one will find what you consider your best deal by shopping your manuscript, and watching out for bugs and gremlins that will make the ride smoother. You're hiring someone who generally has their own business best-interest in mind, and they know things about marketing you haven't experienced, and need to know to maximize the benefits of all your hard work. If you have a publisher and an agent, it's the agent who'll be your stronger friend.
I'm not leaving out established publishers. Plodding and scary as they may be, they like not only to survive, but thrive. Partnering with authors who can sell books goes far for both. They also do publishing things generally correctly, out of habit. Things you'll have on your side with skill and efficiency. They, like agents, know how to avoid the little critters that take away from the embodiment of your hard work.
Most books are still sold in hard-copy, and most are sold to people browsing racks, in established bookstores. Yeah, it's cool to have an ebook, but it's generally far tougher to market books when lacking face-to-face word-of-mouth.
Okay, here I am, on a blog, an established electronic way to get the word out and provoke discussions with others who are somewhere else on the planet. So long as you understand electronic and tangible publishing, they're both a potential help toward your goals.
Just understand that a large part of conventional publishing is easy chatter among people with a physical presence. Office buzz, water-cooler talk, conventions, conferences, reading clubs, these are all habits of experienced figures in the world of publishing, and they open avenues to you and your work that are just not there well at all with electronic publishing. They're powerful, they'll go to bat for you if you light a spark, and it's a facet of the business that is rarely mentioned as a way that can make an author's career. Want that on your side?
Ebooks can now be autographed... did you know that? That's new tech, pretty cool, pretty fun, and possible from most anywhere to most anywhere. I've done some in-store book signings, and the personal interaction was a joy and an event for me and those I met. So long as something like that is not cut out of the process, I approve. I'll embrace that electronic personalizing, as it's just one more potentially fun way to connect with readers.
Indie bookstores and Barnes & Noble are not going away. There will always be readers and buyers who want that tangible product, that interaction, that joy of discovery in a physical bookstore. Real books can be bought and sold and lent and given away as ebooks cannot. Would you want to somehow handicap your presence on bookstore shelves due to your lack of marketing savvy because you went with a system that either cut out those business partners, or made it difficult to maximize a shopper's ability to discover and buy your book? Consider Amazon's CreateSpace route versus those bookstores. Oh, and Amazon doesn't have bathrooms. Or coffee shops. Amazon will naturally do something to make it difficult--if not impossible--for competing booksellers to handle your book. Bookstores generally offer printed books as well as most any ebook available, and you can have them right there and right then and right now.
I know people who published their own books. They're proud of those books, proud of what they did, and this was the best choice for what they published. I know others who had books published the conventional way, through an agent and then through a publisher. This worked for them, too.
All this comes down to two things:
1. What do you really want to accomplish, and are you confident that you can have in place everything you want and need to accomplish that?
2. Picking one route as opposed to another out of fear or greed or reasons counter to your goals is one stupid and harmful move, so for God's sake, do your homework. Know the business as well as you know your own manuscript. Maybe more. You have to do hard and heavy research just to assemble a competent nonfiction book. Well, you have to take the same mindset if you want to publish and market any book.
Your decision is based on far more than getting some text on pages of an otherwise blank book, or pressing SEND and transmitting a text file to an unseen someone.
There are developments in publishing that are exciting and possible traps, if you are not aware and awake. A knee-jerk reaction may cause harm to you and your goals. If you can say, "I've got a guy" or "I've got a gal", that likely beats "I've got software." Then, again, maybe I'm wrong, but it'll take someone's human judgement to decide. You can naturally assume that a second brain, one that knows the ways of the industry, will likely beat going alone.
And that's where my favorite inside-baseball tip comes in.
These changes are human-powered, human-developed, and human-operated, and there is a whole new style of human who may be the most powerful weapon an author could have.
I found a literary agent who offers--as a business service--advice, counsel, marketing and legal and financial advice to anyone with any interest in publishing, be it conventional or do-it-yourself. Which way do you want to go? What do you want to know? As a one-stop service offering, this agent covers all of it.
No matter how versed you may be in the publishing game, having someone at your side who can answer any question and pull any savvy move--with authority and drive--is the best business partner you could imagine.
You think clicking a mouse to deliver a copy of your book is the greatest development in publishing? You think a Flash-based website or a Twitter feed is the hottest? You think selling personalized copies through Ebay is the hottest?
The hottest development is the appearance of that agent who can do anything for you, and the realization of every author-to-be that part of the approach no longer is sending out queries to any agent who just might be some kind of match, but sending a query to an agent who is encompassing of most any author-in-waiting, no matter what their business goals and needs. Imagine an agent who is not in the rejection business, but one who is in the acceptance business. I found one!
Writers now can choose to reject agents, and reject them by the handful, and select the one who furthers their goals. A total reversal of a basic aspect of the process, an aspect that's traditionally been agony for both writer and agent. This new business model will always exist, so long as some form of books are published.
This is the earth-shaking development that writers and readers and publishers and printers and agents have to appreciate the most. And the one that may be overlooked the most.
It'll potentially make more positive difference in an industry, a career, and a job, than any other.
In this brutally competitive business, this news flash is to your benefit.
See you later... on top of the game!
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