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In 2012, my manuscript for Finding Faith was being prepared for publication. During this time, I received an invitation to be on a writer’s workshop panel. The panel was titled “From a Great Idea to a Book.” The panel members included a best-selling author of 17 books translated into 19 languages who had won numerous awards. As the panel discussed how to turn a great idea into a book, she made a comment that revealed the state of publishing. She said, “I am reluctant to give new writers advice because publishing has become the Wild West.”

I entered this untamed new frontier at the birth of publishing’s transformation in the early 2000. While teaching in a church I began writing my own curriculum. The students liked the material and told me “You should be published”, which I dismissed as ridiculous. Eventually, circumstances removed everything from my life except the option to pursue publishing. The first thing I did was hire a professional for an honest opinion, because your friends love you and want to encourage you, but they may not know what they are talking about. The editor I hired to evaluate my writing concurred with my friends. He loved my feeble attempt at a manuscript and suggested a new publishing house called Publish America. Publish America advertised themselves as a Traditional Publisher. But they were not traditional in the traditional definition of traditional publishing.

TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING

A traditional publisher requires an agent. The agent negotiates your contract obtaining the best deal possible. Publishers will pay an advance based on how many copies the publisher thinks they can sell. The average advance paid to a new author is 2,500. After the publisher has recouped the advance, the author receives royalties of about $1 per book. The agent will get 15% of the advance and royalties, which reduces your 2500 advance to about 2100 and your $1 royalty to .85 cents. Most new authors sell around 300 copies, if you sell 5,000 you are considered a success. Bear in mind these figures are not set in stone. There are a lot of variables at play.

When you sign with a traditional publisher you give them your rights to the manuscript. Those rights will eventually revert back to you. The publisher wants to recoup the money he paid, so he uses the rights you gave him to fashion your MS into a product they believe people will buy.

They put the manuscript through three phases of editing, each phase has multiple names. The first phase is a contextual edit that looks at the big picture, and flow of the story.  Second, a copy edit to correct grammar and typos. Proof reading is the final phase and sometimes done during the formatting. Then a graphic artist will design a cover, and the editors will choose a title and write a back cover summary designed to hook readers into buying the book.

Then they will do what they can to get your book before the public. They will send Advance Reader Copies to book reviewers that work for newspapers and magazines. If you are famous, they might schedule radio and television interviews. My publisher produced a 15 second TV commercial and ran it on cable network that targeted my niche market.

Traditional publishers invest more money than the advance they pay the author because they will bear the loss if the book does not sell. The only thing the author loses is his or her rights to the manuscript if those rights are returned.

SELF-PUBLISHING

At one time the only other option was self-publishing, which is the equivalent of opening a small business. You don’t need an agent, so you keep the 15% he or she would have taken. You keep your rights and have full control over the production of the manuscript. You keep all the profits, but you will also pay all the expenses. Self-publishing is expensive and you run the risks of a substantial financial loss if the book does not sell.

It is possible to do well with self-publishing if you can gain access to your niche market. A friend borrowed 10,000 to self-publish a children’s book. She wrote the book, edited the book, and paid a graphic artist to design the cover and interior artwork. She bought the books in bulk to keep printing cost low but still ended up with a children’s book that she initially sold for more than $20, the price is now $16. Then she had to pay all her marketing expenses.

But she did very well because she found access to her niche market in public and private schools. She sent order forms to the teachers. The teachers sent the forms home with the children. She came to the school, did her presentation, and delivered the presold books. The last time I talked to her she had sold 7000 books. That gave her a gross of $100,000.

It’s possible to do well in self-publishing, but it is a lot of work. Every time I talk to her, she tells me how tired she is.

PRINT ON DEMAND

About the time I entered publishing, a third option was available called Print on Demand (POD). Print on Demand technology produced the ability to print only the copies needed and ship the books to whoever needed them. That eliminated the need to maintain large warehouses to store the books and pay salaries to people who worked in the warehouse. The reduced cost in producing books made it easier for more people to be published without a substantial investment of $10 to $30 thousand dollars.

Initially, POD had several big problems. First, no distribution and bookstore placement. I was at a book festival and stopped to talk to a man who was an attorney by day and aspiring writer by night. He asked me “How do publishers’ decide what bookstores to put your book in? That question told me he knew a lot more about being an attorney than he did about publishing. Bookstores decide what they put on their shelves, not publishers. He had used POD. Chain bookstores will not purchase POD books to sell because they were not returnable.

Second, the small publishers that popped up using this new technology did not have money to pay decent editors. Consequently, they flooded the market with a lot of poorly written books, which is another reason bookstores are not interested in POD books.

Third, they did not have money to market a book like the established traditional publishers. They reasoned no one is more passionate about a book than its author, therefore the author can do a better job selling the book and shifted that expense to the author.

Fourth, they set high retail values on their paperback books making the books difficult to sale.

PUBLISH AMERICA

Print on Demand produced Publish America (PA), who called themselves a traditional publisher, but they were more of a hybrid between traditional and self-publishing.

I did not need an agent. Agents will not deal with a POD publisher because they do not pay advances. That agent knows if they do not get their money from the advance, they may get nothing.

Publish America paid me a $1 advance and produced my book at no charge. I signed the contract because I had nothing to lose. In exchange for the $1 advance, they had the right to sell my book for 7 years. My manuscript went through one edit instead of the three or more done by traditional publishers. The editing and formatting were sloppy. They did a nice job on the cover design; the exterior looks just as good as a traditionally published book.

They released A Reason to Believe in 2002. Facebook started in 2004 and Twitter in 2006. There were no affordable options to market a book. I priced an AD in a magazine with a 200,000 circulation. The $6000 cost would have been a waste of money. If someone saw the AD and went to a bookstore, they would not find it because my book was not returnable.

In my opinion PA shot themselves in the foot. Even if I had the money to market the book, I refused to sell it because of the sloppy editing and formatting. If someone bought the book, they would not have a reason to buy a second one. Even if they had got the editing and formatting right, how could I compete with traditionally published paperback books selling for $8 to $16 when mine had a retail value of $24.99.

PRINT ON DEMANDS EVOLVES

Through the years POD made adjustments to make themselves more appealing. Most used a fee-based system, for anywhere from $700 – $2000 they would produce your book but not market it. The fee gave them money to pay better editors, and artist producing a book easier to sale. Then they added an optional fee to made books returnable. In recent years they have come down on the high retail values. They will do some Internet marketing for an additional fee, most of which an author can do on social media for free.

A number POD publishers began offering free self-publishing by providing the tools authors can use to produce their books. The author does all the work then buys their books at wholesale to sell for profit. They also offer all the services done by traditional publishers for an extra fee.

TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING TODAY

As print on demand evolved and digital books became popular traditional publishing has become more like the hybrid publishers using elements of traditional and self-publishing.

A friend was published by a college press. She did not need an agent, and they did not pay her an advance. Her contract included a clause that if the project was not completed, she had to reimburse them for the money they invested to produce her book. Then told her she had to remove 100 pages from the manuscript she sent them. If she had refused, she would have owed them the money they had already invested in producing her book.

They edited her manuscript, but I found 8 errors in my copy of the completed book. Another friend who taught English found 30.

They did not require her to do any marketing, but offered her the same deal bookstores have. She could obtain books from the distributor for free. She paid for the books that sold and returned unsold books. Her only cost was shipping. Her publisher did not reimburse her expenses for the marketing she did.

They set the retail value of her paperback book at $29.95, which made the wholesale cost so high by the time she paid shipping she could not make a profit to defray her marketing expense.

Regardless of some of the negative aspects she dealt with, the college press did what she could never have done on her own as an unknown author. On the strength of College’s reputation her book was picked up nationwide by Barnes and Nobles and purchased by libraries.  The first print run of 2,000 sold and they did a second print run.

Another friend I met at a book festival published six books with Broadman and Holman (B&H). She had New York agent who sold her first book to B&H. The book endorsed by famous politician did extremely well. She made enough money to retire from her job to write full time.

Unfortunately, the agent who got her foot in the door B&H proved useless. She sold her second book to B&H but she was his client, so he still got 15% for doing nothing. She found another agent, who sold her next 4 books to B&H with little effort because she was already in and could have sold them herself. Ultimately her relationship with that agent did not work out. They parted ways.

She received an advance on each of her books but spent all of it doing her own marketing. B&H did some marketing. She was included in a magazine AD with some of the publisher’s other authors. They did not pay for book tours, so she did her own book tour using the advance they paid her. I attended a book signing she did in New Orleans. Me, two of my friends and one of her friends were the only ones at the signing.

Then her publisher decided they were not making enough money with fiction, so they abolished that department leaving her without a publisher and agent.

Last example, a friend who is a New York Times and international bestselling author, began writing in the 1980s. She has 47 books published by a division of Random House.

She also has a good working relationship with her agent. Her agent handles the international contracts from the 25 countries who sell her books. Early in her career her publisher sent her on book tours. She was treated like a rock star in Japan.

I met her in the late 2000s, and asked her, “What does your publisher do to market your book?”  My question was met with awkward silence as she pondered how to answer. She mumbled, “They don’t do book tours anymore it’s too expensive.” More silence. Then her face brightened, and she said, “You need a good mailing list.” That was the last thing I expected to hear from such a successful author.

The following year, she spoke at a meeting I attended and made the comment “At some point you have to consider what the publisher is really bringing to the party.” She eventually released a POD book, because traditional publisher are not bringing to the party what they used to.

All my traditionally published friends are either thinking about using POD or they have already done it. POD has leveled the playing field. Regardless of how your book was published you are in the same company as international bestselling authors.