Why Self-Publish? UPDATED · 7:24pm Apr 25th, 2014
I get asked this question a lot. Why do I self-publish? It's not as if I couldn't be published by a large publisher, as many readers have contacted me to point out. Why spend time self-publishing when I could be playing with a big publisher? Why not send Dead Silver off to a publisher and show them the numbers from my first book rather than publish it myself? Then I wouldn't have to spend money on editing, cover work, or any other tangential costs. I could just write a manuscript, send it in, and get to work on the next one.
Except it's not that simple. I get this question a lot mostly because most people don't understand publishing. The truth is, while I could get published by a publisher, I don't want to at this time. For a lot of the same reasons a lot of other big-ticket authors have recently jumped onto the self-publishing bandwagon, in fact. First and foremost of which is the fact that publishers are not there to promote good books, they are there to make money.
A lot of people seem surprised by this, but come on. Of course that's what they want to do. That's what I want to do as well, by the way. I like having money to spend on rent and food (and it's why I'll periodically plug my book like this with a link). But when you're a company that sells tens of thousands of books per year and is responsible for hundreds or thousands of employees, it's not about publishing only what's good, it's about what's going to keep the money coming in. Which means publishing what you think will sell, even if it happens to be a piece of absolute trash. Publishers are not the gatekeepers of quality, as so many in the public think. They're the gatekeepers of "we can sell this, not this." It's pretty easy to see the numbers on this one. How many trashy tween-vampire books were published after Twilight was a hit? Enough that some bookstores had a section for them. Were publishers suddenly realizing "holy crap, these are phenomenally well-written?" No. They saw a revenue source and seized it.
My first rejection letter was from an editor at Tor. I had sent him a story I was working on that was about a group of people in the future who raced small, single-person submarines. It was, at the time, the best thing I'd ever written, to the point where another author who is a juggernaut (and who's name I won't mention for fear of being accused of "name-drop") still asks me when it's going to be published every time he sees me. So it was pretty good. But it got rejected. Not because it wasn't a good story (the letter in fact said that it was quite good story) but because the editor had no idea if there was a market for a story like that. With no idea whether or not the work would be profitable, despite him liking it, he had to reject it.
I understand. I don't hold it against him. He had a point. About the closest comparison you could have made to it was "Speed Racer but underwater." It was a lot of fun to write and read. But is there a market ready for that? Well, no. It'd be a hard sell unless you had a name behind it that people would blindly buy (this is why some authors will "break into" the publishing world with a fairly standard premise book series and then write the book "they wanted to all along").
But that's the way publishers work. They need to sell what will sell right off the bat. They need to make money. And that means turning away things that would be a hard sell in favor of the easy-to-sell stuff that they know people will buy.
So, that's one reason I decided to go into self-publishing. I knew I could sell decent numbers of new stuff without the massive overhead risk that a publisher would normally be unwilling to take, and I wouldn't have to sell as many to break even. I broke even for the cost of the editing and cover on One Drink. I haven't made much past that, but I did break even. Dead Silver, being a much larger book (460 pages everyone!) is going to take a much higher number of sales to break even, but I'm confident it will before long. I'm quickly reaching the point where a publisher would overlook "we don't know if this will sell" because I've already sold a decent number of copies on my own (so arguably, at this point, I could be polishing up that sub story and sending it back with some sales numbers if I felt like publishing it).
But there are other things to consider as well. First of all, if I sign with a publisher, who owns the rights to the book, the characters, and the universe I create? That's right, it's can be the publisher, not the writer. Publishers will sometimes keep all rights, to the extreme that some major publishers will even put you under a several year embargo if you leave their company, preventing you by contract for writing, publishing and selling with anyone else for as much as five years. Ouch. Film rights? Publisher. You might see a single check for a few thousand, but most likely not a cent. Rights to sequels? Publisher. Worse, some publishers will force authors to rewrite books to suite their own interests (Vampires are in, Tony, we need the main character in this series to become a vampire in the next book or we're dumping you), and since they own the rights ... no choice.
Past that, you won't even make much money off of what you do write. Most published authors depend on the check they get up front when they write a new manuscript for their income, rather than the tiny amount publishers throw their way. You know how much the average an author might make off of that $8 paperback you just bought at the bookstore? Less than 1%. If you want that author to make $8, you're going to need to buy just over 100 copies of their book (Not always the case, see update below).
Not all publishers are quite so bad. Baen, for example, would probably be the only publishing house I'd go to since they have a reputation for NOT living by a lot of the list up above (pretty much all but payments, because there's only so much they can do). Self publishing on the other hand, lets me keep all my own rights. Film rights (however unlikely)? Mine. Character rights? Owned by me. Universe? Mine.
The payments are better too. Sure, I'm footing the costs of editing, artwork, advertising, etc (which is not cheap, believe me, a good cover can run you $2000-5000 dollars if you go for a professional, and editing is about the same). But at the same time, where the average author makes less than 1% back, I'm making 70%. I have control over the cost of the book (one reason why One Drink sells for $3 instead of the $5 a paperback would normally cost for that size). Ultimately, the only feet I can lay the blame for failure at is my own. But I'm okay with that.
Obviously, it would be nice if I could just submit a manuscript to an editor without having to worry about paying him, procuring a cover, advertising, and everything else that goes into creating a book. But I'm willing to make those concessions. Now, are there other draw backs? Of course. Self-published books still hold a fairly negative stigma, despite the number of authors who are turning to it (and away from their contracts with big publishing houses). I've been told that I'm not a "real writer" for not going through a publishing house (although given the number of "we'll publish anything for money" publishing houses out there, that says more about the commentator than anything else). I have to deal with my own advertising, my own editing fees, and take a lot of extra responsibility on. And to be fair, there is a lot of trashy self-published fiction out there, and at the moment it can be hard to separate the gold from the pyrite. But as an element of the industry, it's growing quite well, and I'm actually pretty proud to be getting in on the ground floor.
So why do I self publish? I can take risks publishers won't take. I can write the story I want to tell. I get a better royalty. And I have a bit more freedom. Will I ever sign with a publisher? We'll see. Baen's got a good rep, and other authors that I've spoken to that have gone self-published and switched to Baen have been very happy with the way they've been treated. I'm keeping the option on my plate. Maybe after Dead Silver and Colony, I'll pitch my next manuscript at Baen and see what they say. But whether or not they say yes or no, I'll be able to fall back on the existing base I have if I decide to stay self-publishing. But for now, I'm pretty happy with where I'm at. I can take the risks I want to take, tell the stories that publishers aren't willing to gamble on, and I can make my success or break it on my own merits.
And for now, I'm more than content to do that.
Editted: Fixed a busted link and a few typos.
UPDATE: Azusa was kind enough to point out that the 1% rate is by no means the end all. Tor, for example, has offered some authors as high as a 15% royalty rate. People do make money writing. What you make and where depend a lot on who you get if from and what the contract is like. You might make 1%, you might make 15% (which is a nice sum), and I apologize for insinuating otherwise.
Thank you for that, it just confirmed more or less what I was thinking about publisher in general...
Oh and an interesting thing came to mind:
IF you ever sign for a publisher, would you be afraid loosing "fans"?
that is something I witnessed for some time for bands when they went "mainstream" because they "sold their independence and quality"(errm, I could really dicuss this for hours...or just laugh when I think of some facts regarding the independence part. dl.dropbox.com/u/21167245/FiMFiction/Emoticons/misc_Octy_something.png )
Ok,thats all from me, write on and so.
Bis neulich!
It's great the infrastructure exists today so you can do this. But I do have one marketing related question, why charge $3 for a book that you might be able to get $5 for?
You probably have a better idea of your audience than I do, but your still in the realm of a $5 cup of coffee at Starbucks, even if you increased the price. You would also make 33% more profits by doing so. Providing you didn't lose more than 66% of your original projected sales you would be making more money.
Although I haven't published anything myself yet, these are things I keep in mind while I make applications for the Apple AppStore.
This is rather interesting to hear of. How bad publishers are, i've heard some of the stories that they are that bad, but its nice to hear its fully true, not just hearsay.
2046304
Losing fans? No. That might be a thing with music, but I've never heard of book fans running from a series just because it's switched publishers. Most readers honestly are about the story, in fact I doubt most people could even name the publisher of their favorite books.
Publishers serve a purpose. That's why people go to them. Many authors don't mind them much at all.
2046789
Because I honestly don't think it should be $5. After all, it's only a hundred pages long. I wouldn't pay $5 for it myself, and while there are people that would, I've decided that there are probably far more who would buy it for $3 than $5. Then again, I weigh things toward the low end. I want people to feel like they've gotten a good deal for their money, and in fact a couple of the reviews I've gotten have mentioned that they felt that the book was well priced for the amount of time they put into it.
Dead Silver on the other hand, will probably be $6 bucks. It's a much larger work (roughly 460 pages), and I'm putting it at a price that's still a good deal for the value, but not so low that I'll feel like it's just too much of a deal.
2046802
Always, always research the publisher you're sending manuscripts to, lest you be taken advantage of.
At first I was just going leave a comment here saying why I don't really care for "self published" books, but I noticed a number of problems with your post...
>it's not about publishing what's good, it's about what's going to keep the money coming in. Which means publishing what you think will sell, even if it happens to be a piece of absolute trash. Publishers are not the gatekeepers of quality, as so many in the public think. They're the gatekeepers of "we can sell this, not this." It's pretty easy to see the numbers on this one. How many trashy tween-vampire books were published after Twilight was a hit? Enough that some bookstores had a section for them.
You seem to be assuming that not one of the vampire books published after Twilight were any good at all. Granted, it's debatable which vampire books of that era are the good ones, but you can't say that there aren't any. As for why the ones that weren't so great got published, well, I'll let Brandon explain that one.
>My first rejection letter was from an editor at Tor. ...it was pretty good. But it got rejected. Not because it wasn't a good story (the letter in fact said that it was quite good story) but because the editor had no idea if there was a market for a story like that. With no idea whether or not the work would be profitable, despite him liking it, he had to reject it.
Did the editor ask to see any other books you had written? If not, then I kinda doubt that the editor liked the book that much.
>if I sign with a publisher, who owns the rights to the book, the characters, and the universe I create? That's right, it's usually the publisher, not the writer.
No actual publisher worth their salt does this. The only thing that they buy is the license to publish your book. All that other stuff stays with the author. [1]
>Publishers generally keep all rights, to the extreme that some major publishers will even put you under a several year embargo if you leave their company, preventing you by contract for writing, publishing and selling with anyone else for as much as five years.
It’s actually a lot more complicated and less strict than that. The way it works is that if another publisher offers to buy your next book, your original publisher has the right to outbid them. [2]
>You know how much the average author might make off of that $8 paperback you just bought at the bookstore? Less than 1%. If you want that author to make $8, you're going to need to buy just over 100 copies of their book.
No, the royalty rates (for Tor, at least) are 15% per Hardcover and 8-10% per paperback. Granted, it’s not as much as the 70% Amazon gives you, but it’s still way more than 1%. [3]
I ask that you please post a retraction to correct these errors.
***
As for my own feelings toward publishing with Amazon, I really see it as just a fad—one that ended the moment that some of the big publishers started selling ebooks for less than paperback prices. Heck, most of Tor’s books are as cheap as $6. Sometimes $3.
But beyond that, my real problem is that the only thing I’ve heard about Amazon publishing from the start is all money money money. I don’t want to hear about the people who are getting rich off of Amazon publishing. I want to hear about the books that could only have existed because of this. Where are the authors like ShortSkirtsAndExplosions and Applejinx who could never be published otherwise? I just feel like Amazon publishing isn’t the place where writers like them will break out.
2047175
I didn't say that there aren't any good books that came out of that, I merely pointed out that there were trashy ones. And then there were ones that were reprints of series twenty years ago (Stackhouse, it's called?) that were republished because their time had come. But for what good resulted, there were plenty of poor books that were a result of editors grabbing every manuscript that came their way. And since you're a fan of Brandon, have you ever heard him talk about what happened after Eragon? Publishers signing so quickly that two different houses ended up with the same book, one of which was plagiarized from the other writer?
Emphasis added.
Depends on where you go. Some publishers treat their writers well (Baen, for instance, actually reworked a writers contract when they realized that they'd screwed up and given themselves more than they'd written). Others will do everything they can to keep you from getting a book picked up anywhere else. It sounds like you need to talk to more writers than just Brandon Sanderson and widen your net. Brandon's great. He's also a rock star in the writing world, and trying to mess him over would be career suicide. Other writers aren't so lucky. One writer I knew dumped a company and his agent after they locked him in to write a book he didn't want to write ... while he was on vacation.
He still had to write the book.
Actually he did ask. At the time, I didn't have anything else worth sending, but it was nice to see all the same. Enjoying your foot?
At some publishers, yes, this is true. For others, this isn't the case. Again, you need to talk to more authors out there. This happens, although most these days are shrewd enough to read the fine print.
One book publisher giving a royalty rate to Brandon does not the industry make. Most authors I've spoken with make far less than that. The rates vary based on where the book is sold, what their contract is, and what publisher they're with, but having spoken in person with a writer who makes 1% on each sale, I can confidently say your research needs to be a bit more hands on.
I will update the original post to include a point on all publishers being different, but you cannot wander into publishing hoping for the best deals offered to writers like Stephen King. It just won't happen.
The Deacon Trilogy, by Joseph Lallo, to name one. While his Amazon.com page is out of date, his blog confirms that he quit his day-job last year to write full time. Larry Correia, to name another (and who might be taking a Hugo this year), got his start as a self-publisher and then got an offer from Baen. Nice guy, fun books (and definitely worth reading if you like action-adventure).
So you had your own cover art done? So you had to find and pay an artist yourself?
2047273
Eeyup.
It's not that tough, but there's a range of prices you can find if you hunt around. I spent a couple of days talking with people before I found someone in my price range who had the style I was looking for. He did the cover for Dead Silver as well, although I'll probably go with a new artist for the next book, just to try a new look.
2047248
I'm curious, how many of these author friends of yours have actually shown you their contracts? I'm fairly certain that Brandon has seen book contracts from authors other than himself. But even if he hasn't, they're contracts. You can negotiate contracts; if you don't like the offer they give you, you can refuse it. No one is holding a gun to your head to sign. Are there bad publishers out there? Absolutely. The idea is to know what you're doing so that you only sign with the good ones.
Also, you seemed to have misunderstood what I meant by "the books that could only have existed because of this." I want to see something like Background Pony or the Winning-verse. Something crazy awesome that didn't have a built in audience before it came out.
2047567
Joseph Lallo got his start there. He started from zero, and built himself an audience to the point where he writes full time. Correia built himself one on forums by writing stuff there and releasing it as a self-published stuff.
Unless you're looking for something like "Background Pony" being turned into a book on Amazon, that more than answers what you asked for.
I think an important thing you have to recognize is that a lot of authors are good at writing, NOT at doing business, which is the same problem that a lot of musicians have. Really, in the end, anything you do is a business, and as a result of that, being good at business will get you better ROI.
There are also a lot of different situations which can come up. For instance, Sanderson finished up the Wheel of Time series for Robert Jordan after he died; he does not have the rights to that world. He had the right to make those books, and the copyright on them may or may not belong to him (I'm not sure if he did them as work for hire or not), but the film rights for the Wheel of Time likely rests with Robert Jordan's estate.
If you're doing work for hire - something like writing the upteenth Goosebumps book or whatever - chances are you're not going to own the rights to your book, you're producing the book for a fee, the same as someone producing art for some other company or what have you. This isn't at all uncommon and it isn't evil, you just need to know what it is you're signing up for.
Conversely, if you're writing something out of the blue and trying to get published, you probably shouldn't be signing away your rights to it. I wouldn't be surprised if publishers tried to pull this on people, but if you know what you're doing, this shouldn't happen to you. JK Rowling's first books were the Harry Potter series AFAIK, and she kept all the rights to them, so clearly this is not at all unusual.
The other thing which needs to be remembered is that how this all works out depends on the company and the contract. If the company pays me $100k up front for my book at 1% on everything after that, that is different from the company paying me nothing up front but 10% on everything after that. Saying you get 1% per book can be deeply misleading if you were paid some flat fee in addition to whatever you get per book, though there are other situations as well (where, for instance, you are paid an advance, but your percentage of the book sales only kick in once it would be above that advance). Getting paid up front can be useful, but it can also be a double-edged sword as you may get a lower rate as a result because the publisher is shouldering more of the risk (in other words, if the book makes less than what they paid you up front, the publisher still paid you all that money and got a lower ROI). It is higher risk for the publisher, but it can also be higher reward.
Knowing what to do when you're dealing with publishing companies is the same as knowing what to do when you're up against any other big business - their goal is to get as much as they can for as little as they can give in exchange for it. Your goal is the same. Where you end up depends on your and their business savvy. I suspect a lot of people who get bad contracts are the people who were blinded by "I GOT PUBLISHED" and didn't really realize what they were signing.
Man, I'm working hard to find a cover artist, and I know I can't drop several thousand dollars. We're discussed this, but any ideas?
2052791
You can always browse DeviantArt and look for artists doing commissions. Several thousand is what it will cost you for someone who does constant work for publishers (for example, one of the artists I talked with has done a lot of work you've probably seen in bookstores in the sci-fi section and his covers started at around 2-3 thousand). These guys are well known, and they're paid accordingly. Of course, you're going to get a cover back fast.
However, you can find other artists who are around or close to the same level who are just supplementing their income. I paid several hundred for each of my covers, and hired an art student. Each one took longer to get than someone who would have been doing it full time and immediately (and the work isn't super amazing pro-level), but it's what I can work with.
If you'd like, I can send you his contact info. If not, my best advice is to hunt around art sites looking for someone who's style you like for what you had in mind and then look at what they charge for commissions. You're going to be spending several hundred at the least, though. Bare minimum,
2053238 Yes, please!