# Author Earnings Website - Traditional Vs Self-Pub



## Waz (Sep 1, 2014)

An agent friend posted an article from this website, and it's given me a lot to think about in regards to my path forward. It's authorearnings.com, and here's a link to one article that shows the balance of money in SFF between traditional publishing and self-publishing.

July 2014 Author Earnings Report Ã¢â‚¬“ Author Earnings

The articles from this site are information dense, but trends in the data indicate that SFF money is already favoring self-published, especially for new authors. Of course there are lots of reasons why someone might favor one publishing approach over another, but this type of data has not traditionally been available for helping decisions.

Of course, this data will be completely out-of-date within only a few years. Every publisher, agent, editor, and writer I've spoken to says the same thing, that no one knows with certainty what the publishing industry will be like in five years.


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## psychotick (Sep 2, 2014)

Hi,

Fascinating article. 

However I would still say that the most important factor in choosing whether to go indie or trade is the author himself. If you don't want, don't know how to do a cover, blurb, marketing, editing, or simply can't afford to pay for these services trade is your route. Similarly if you're willing to wait to get a deal and truly believe you can get an agent, it's trade. But remember your book has to be of a standard before it will even be looked at.

If on the other hand you are willing to learn / upskill yourself in all the ancillary parts of publishing and have the skills or the finances to pay for what you can't do yourself, and you don't want to wait, indie is your better option. But always professionalism and quality have to be your watchwords. There's not much of a market for shoddy books.

And if you don't have the skills or the money to do these things, and still don't want to wait or try to get an agent then indie is your only option. However, I wouldn't. There are far too many substandard books out there and they already don't get agents and don't sell. The best option is don't publish or submit until you're ready.

As I've said before. You should always write for pleasure, but publish as a business.

Cheers, Greg.


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## Waz (Sep 2, 2014)

psychotick said:


> You should always write for pleasure, but publish as a business.



Well said, Greg. Writing is definitely a pleasure. My hope is to do well enough on the business side to make that pleasure at least half of my work week. I realize that even that goal will be difficult to reach, but I'll try nonetheless and enjoy it (most of the time  )


The perceived legitimacy from being picked up by a publisher and put on a bookseller's shelf is traditional publishing's big trump card. It will be interesting to see how, or if, that changes in the coming years.


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## Mythopoet (Sep 3, 2014)

psychotick said:


> However I would still say that the most important factor in choosing whether to go indie or trade is the author himself. If you don't want, don't know how to do a cover, blurb, marketing, editing, or simply can't afford to pay for these services trade is your route.



I strongly disagree with this. There is not a person alive who cannot learn the skills, save up the money to pay for them or trade with other writers to get them done. Even the extremely poor among us (a group in which I count myself) should be able to save up $100-150 for a good cover within a year or so (yes, you can get a good cover for that much if you shop around), which is light years faster than you'll be able to get traditionally published. You can easily learn to do ebook conversion and formatting for yourself through many, many online resources that are completely free. Get involved in the indie community and you'll meet tons of extremely helpful people who can either point you toward reliable, affordable editors and proofreaders or with whom you can trade services (e.g. I'll proofread your manuscript if you'll proofread mine). There is nothing hard about self-publishing. Anyone can do it. 

On the other hand, if you decide to go the traditional route, you'll either have to spend (most likely) years submitting various manuscripts before you get an editor interested or you'll have to spend years querying agents to do it for you and there's a strong chance you'll land an agent who won't do their job properly anyway. If you do manage to land a deal, you'll highly probably get a measly advance, lose all rights to your work, and it still won't be published for another year to 18 months. Your tiny advance will be split up into either 2 or 3 payments delivered many months apart and you won't get any royalty statements until 6 months after the book releases so you won't have any idea how it's doing. 

BUT and this REALLY needs to be emphasized. All this is ONLY if you manage to "win" the lottery of getting traditionally published. Traditional publishing is NOT, I repeat NOT, a path you can choose. It chooses you. There is no guarantee that you will ever be published if you go that route. There are tons of self-published writers who spent years or decades trying to break into traditional publishing but never did. They don't self publish because they resent traditional publishing, they do it because they never had the choice to traditionally publish. But they have the choice to publish now. And it's also not because they weren't any good. A lot of them are achieving huge success or even moderate success (which we call actually earning a living through writing) or small success (which is about what any midlist traditionally published writer can hope for) because readers are buying their books. But the truth is that traditional publishing is in the business of limiting how many writers are allowed to reach readers. 

ONLY try to get traditionally published if you really want ALL choices and control to be taken away from you.


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## Chilari (Sep 3, 2014)

I don't think it's quite so cut and dry as all that. Traditional publishing isn't this great big monster of exploitation that only an idiot would pick. It has advantages - distribution networks, higher budgets for cover art, the perception of legitimacy. Sure, it's difficult to break into but that doesn't mean it's not a good idea to go for. Traditional publishing also means that, instead of spending all your time learning how to do X, Y and Z aspects of publishing, and trading manuscripts to get editing, and saving every penny to get a cover done a year later, you can spend more of your time writing and less time publishing. It just depends on whether you value that time and the other advantages of traditional publishing more than holding onto rights and choices. People are still making decisions to traditionally publish, and they have reasons for that and do not regret their decisions down the line (I think Mark Lawrence did a blog post about his experiences).

You say there's nothing hard about self-publishing, but there are a lot of new skills to learn. Now, a lot of us work full time and have full lives. We've got limited writing time. If it takes a year to learn the skills and save the dosh to self-publish a novel, but during that time no progress is made writing another novel or improving writing ability, is that a year well-spent?

I don't think traditional publishing can be dismissed as an option so easily. Sure, self-publishing is getting better all the time - easier and cheaper to do, with greater recognition - but for now, it is perfectly reasonable to prefer the traditional route, if it is once you've got the ability and luck to get into.


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## psychotick (Sep 3, 2014)

Hi Myth,

I'll have to disagree with you as well. Self publishing is hard. There are a lot of skills to learn and while you can outsource many of them, they aren't necessarily cheap. Cover design has become quite affordable thanks to places like deviant art. But editing - good quality editing - is not. I've had quotes for my books in the thousands of bucks. Also if you've never done it before, how do you know what is a good cover and what isn't? What will appeal to your readers? Again look at the covers section in any writer's forum and you'll find the same post again and again and again - Is this a good cover? Likewise marketing is tricky and getting your books on to bookshelves in stores is damned hard without a publishing company behind you.

I agree with you that most indies can do these things. But not that it's a thing every author can do or should want to. And you'll notice in my post - the part you quoted - I included not wanting among my list of reasons why an author might not want to go indie. Some authors just want to write and not deal with the rest. (And that is the biggest reason why I do not do marketing for my books.)

Trade publishing has its place for some - if they're both good and lucky. And I say that while still not being a fan of trade publishing.

Look indie is good. Probably the best option. For most of us it will be the only way we will ever be able to get published at all. But you should never under-estimate the amount of work and learning that is involved in becoming an indie publisher. Or at least a good one. If you're happy just having your book collapse to the bottom of the unread slush pile because it's poorly edited, has a crap cover and poor blurb, then yes - it's easy. If you want more, you have to invest time and effort.

Cheers, Greg.


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