Traditional or Independent? That is the question.

When I started writing stories, many, many, many years ago, I never envisioned attempting to turn my hobby in to a career. Over those *cough* twenty-something years, I hadn't really thought about how a book gets published. As far as I was concerned, a writer writes something, a publisher publishers it and then shops sell the finished article. The road from beginning to end, was not something that really mattered to me.

It does now.

Ooh, boy. Does it ever.

Over the last year, between writing and editing (and more editing), I've been mulling over how I want to get my book out into the world. These days, there are a few options open to writers, from the traditional route with a 'big five' publishing house to self-publishing (the independent route) and everything in between.

So, what does this all mean, and how do you decide which one is best? I'm going to focus on traditional vs indie publishing, for the sake of simplicity. There are also small publishing houses, publishing houses that offer ebooks only, and hybrid publishers who offer editing and marketing services for a price.

So, traditional publishing. How does it work? First up, I'm no expert, except on the copious amount of posts and lectures I watched about this, but it boils down to this. The writer finishes their book, does several rounds of self-edits to make it as good as possible, then they hunt down an agent. An agent acts as something of a gatekeeper and cheerleader between the author and publishing houses. If an agent likes your work, they will offer to represent you. They will sometimes offer suggestions of how to improve on what you've already written, before they start to approach the publishing houses. If the acquisition editor likes it, the publishing house will have a conflab and then offer to buy your book. As part of that, they will offer a contract. You sign over all rights to your work to them, in exchange for their expertise in editing, cover design, a bit of marketing (more on this later) and getting your book into major retailers and libraries. They'll offer an advance payment, then royalties (around 35%) on the sale of your books. You only get these royalties, once they've made the advance back in sales. Your agent will take a cut of this for representing you and hopefully fighting your corner for a good contract.

Independent publishing, on the other hand is the writer saying, nah, I'm good and arranging all the editing, cover design, and marketing themselves and selling the book through Amazon, Ingram Spark, Draft to Digital, etc.

The pros and cons of these two systems? You may have guessed at a few.

Advantages of Traditional Publishing

• Kudos of being trad published

• The advance payment

• Editing, cover design sorted for the author without upfront costs to themselves

• Getting the book into major retailers (such as Waterstones in the UK, and Barnes and Noble in the US)

• Getting your book into libraries

• Having a team behind you

  
  

Disadvantages of Traditional Publishing

• The time it takes (3, 6, 12, months, potentially longer to find an agent, then at least two years on top of that to prepare the book for publication).

• Lower royalty rates

• Agent takes a cut of those royalties

• Loss of control over your work (as in the author often doesn't choose the title, the book cover and will have to negotiate any changes the publishing house editors want to make). Your work is owned by the publishing house, forever, unless somewhere in your contract there's a time limit on it. You don't get to decide how long that book will be available for, if it will get reprinted or even when to run sales on it.

• The advance is not that great (around £5-10k if you're a newbie) unless you're a big name author/celebrity/athlete).

Advantages of Independent Publishing

• Control over all of it.

• Higher royalties (up to 70% when publishing through Amazon).

• It remains your work to do with as you will, and make changes if you need to.

• You can still get the book into some shops and libraries, with companies like Ingram Spark. You can approach smaller independent book stores who support local authors.

Disadvantages of Independent Publishing

• The author has to invest in their writing up front, as if they are starting up their own business. They need to source the editors, the cover designers, format the book, and pay for it all up front.

• There is no guarantee that they will make that money back.

• Marketing. Shudder. I didn't add this as an advantage of traditional publishing, because if you're a newbie author and not one of the publishing houses big names, you will only get a small marketing budget allocated to you. In essence, you still do the lion share of marketing yourself.

• There is still some snobbery around publishing a book independently, with some people saying that they aren't as good as trad published books. I don't know about you, but I have read a fair mix of trad vs indie books and there are good and bad among both.

So which route did I choose?

Well, I spent some time researching both, looking up agents and publishing houses, as well as listening to self-publishing talks. Though the kudos of being traditionally published appeals, it doesn't appeal as much as control over my work and higher royalties. I haven't tried querying agents because I still have two young children, and having control over my time and working around them is important right now. Maybe in the future, I will think again, but for now, being independent is the right way for me.

.