After running an indie publishing company for over fifteen years, this is one of the most frequently asked questions I used to, and still do, get asked, and one of the most popular workshops I run.
If you’ve finished your book, or you’re getting close, there are a few different routes you can take to get to the point where you have your book in your hand.
I usually describe the publishing industry right now as a spectrum, with traditional publishing at one end and self-publishing at the other with several options in the middle ground between the two.
Whether you chose to go trad or indie, there’s really no right or wrong way, but there are a few pitfalls you can avoid, and there are some questions you need ask yourself.
Traditional Publishing
There are currently five major publishing houses, which are known as ‘The Big Five’: Penguin Random House (includes imprints like Bantam Books), Hachette Book Group (includes imprints like Little Brown and Orbit), Harper Collins (includes Dey Street Books), Simon & Schuster and Macmillan (includes Picador).
These are typically difficult to access and don’t accept unsolicited manuscripts from unknown authors.
You get your book in front of these big publishers via an agent via a pitch. This doesn’t cost you anything other than the time and effort to research agents and send out your pitch, which is usually your first three chapters, a synopsis and a letter of introduction detailing your credentials. You need to really target your queries, find an agent (by name not just agency) who deals with books that are similar to yours and then prepare your pitch specifically for them to their specifications. These are usually by email now but do check what they want, even down to the details of how long your synopsis should be (one page, two pages?) and what font size they want it in.
If you’re writing fiction, it’s a good idea to have your manuscript complete, revised and polished before you start querying. If an agent asks to see your whole book, they’ll want it right then, not in a few months’ time. If you’re writing non-fiction, you can often pitch an idea before actually writing it.
Finding an agent who will take on you and your book is tough, and it might come down to luck, timing and persistence, not necessarily how good your book is or how great a writer you are. I’ve known people pick up interest from an agent through social media messages, through attendance and networking at book industry events, and by pure determination to keep trying, book after book until hitting upon the one that landed on the right desk at the right time.
It can be hard to keep going amidst fairly ruthless rejection but if you want a traditional deal with a big publisher, that’s what it takes.
If you are picked up by an agent, it’s then that agent’s job to tout your book to the big publishers and sell your book to them, coming back to you with a traditional publishing deal and a contract to buy the rights to publish, market and sell your book. You will then be paid royalties from subsequent sales. As I said, this doesn’t cost you anything in terms of money, but you sell the rights to your work and in effect you don’t own it anymore.
Pros:
- this route doesn’t cost you anything in terms of fees or money up front
- the big publishers have teams of editorial, legal and marketing professionals to work on your book to get it ready for the market they target
- having an agent to encourage and direct your career can be fab
Cons:
- this route takes time and determination… it can take months to hear from an agent, and then months or even years for an agent to sell your book and come back with a deal
- a publisher might request changes that you’d prefer not to make but once you sign a deal, those decisions are then theirs
- you no longer own the rights to your work… if someone wants to adapt your book for screen or audio, that’s up to the publisher to negotiate. I know one writer whose trad deal was for eBook only and the publisher refused to publish a paperback book
Note to beware: I have heard of, and encountered, agents who seem to have great enthusiasm for your book, only to suggest that they’d love to work with you if you’d just work with an editor to get the book where it needs to be, and they recommend an editor which will only cost you $X… with no guarantees. It can be very flattering, but generally legit agents want to sell your book to a publisher who will take care of that. This route shouldn’t cost you anything.
Small Press
Also at the trad end of the publishing spectrum are small press publishers. These are usually smaller companies which often specialise in a certain genre or type of book, such as crime, true crime, LGBTQ+ and so on.
These publishers usually accept unsolicited manuscripts, and again the process doesn’t cost you anything but the time and effort it takes to find the right match and send a query that gives your book the best chance of being taken on.
Pros:
- this route doesn’t cost you anything in terms of fees or money up front
- working with a specialist publisher that knows the market for your book can give it a real boost
Cons:
- working with a small team means resources might be limited and your book might not be a priority
- a publisher might request changes that you’d prefer not to make but once you sign a deal, those decisions are then theirs
- signing a traditional deal means you no longer own the rights to your work… even getting hold of physical copies of your book for a signing or event has to go through the publisher
- you will still be required to work on promoting your book even though you’re only being paid the agreed royalty
Self Publishing
At the other end of the spectrum is self publishing or independent publishing. This is no longer the realms of ‘vanity’ publishing but is a serious prospect if you want to own your own work. I know writers who have had traditional deals with big publishers and have then chosen to self-publish subsequent books.
At the extreme end of self publishing, the author writes, produces, distributes, markets and sells their own book – using their own skills. There are platforms online such as Amazon’s KDP that do not charge an author up front fees to list their books, in Kindle eBook, and paperback and hardback print on demand formats, therefore this route also does not have to cost you anything. But you do need to know what you’re doing.
You can publish directly from files created in software packages such as Microsoft Word, but there are specialist packages that it might be worth investing in, such as Vellum for Mac or Atticus for PC, if you’re going to be publishing more than one book. There are also promotional tools such as Publisher Rocket that aren’t essential but can be tremendously useful.
Pros:
- you own all the rights to your book and any negotiations for screen, audio or translation rights are yours
- you have total control over the final book, its cover and where it is listed for distribution
- you decide when to release the book… immediately as soon as it’s ready to go, or after a three or four month launch campaign, up to you
- you can see where and when you’ve sold your book as often as you want to look at your statistics
- all the revenue from sales (less distribution fees) comes directly to you
- you decide how much you want to spend on marketing and promotion
Cons:
- all the work is down to you so if you don’t know how to do something, you need to learn
- you don’t have a team of people to encourage you so you have to motivate yourself every step of the way
- it’s easy to make mistakes, especially on the layout and typesetting of a book, that might not be disastrous but will make your book look ‘homemade’ if you’re not careful
Self Publishing Paying for Author Services
If you have budget to spend and you decide you don’t want to do or can’t do everything yourself, you can opt to buy in certain author services, such as editing, typesetting, cover design, proofreading and file production, from professionals. The costs for these services vary as does the service you get.
The only pieces of advice I can really give is that it’s worth taking the time to find someone you like to work with and that it’s absolutely important to work out a budget and stick to it, being realistic about the potential revenue, short time, that you can expect to come back in from sales. I’ve spoken to writers who have spent £8k to £10k on editing and then still have a manuscript that is not ready to go. I know writers who have paid to work with editors who have then made changes with no discussion, leaving the writer not even sure what’s in their book anymore or what’s been taken out.
I also know people who are confident in their writing and editing, and just want a final tidy edit from someone else as an extra pair of eyes before they go ahead, or people who can do everything else but want a professional designer to produce their cover.
However, you decide to proceed, make sure you know what you’re committing to and that you know exactly what you’re getting from anyone you work with.
Hybrid Publishing – a word of warning
In the middle ground between trad and indie, there is a murky area and if you encounter this, beware.
Hybrid publishing or joint ventures or whatever they’re calling it currently is where you are offered what looks like a traditional publishing deal but there is then a line that suggests that, because you may be a new or unknown author, the publisher would like you to share the risk, ie. the costs, and they offer a price that is inferred to be half the cost of publishing that you are expected to pay, usually before any work is done.
Because it’s always a traditional deal, which is usually very flattering, when you sign, you are signing away your rights, your ownership of your work, and you are paying them for the privilege.
I have a problem with this model of publishing because I’ve encountered too many writers who thought they were signing a traditional deal, and didn’t realise the implications. I know people who paid anything from £2k-£3k up to £9-£10k for someone to publish their book and take their rights, and then often not give a great service. I even know of one writer who paid £30k, who was dismayed when the wrong version of their manuscript was published and was then told there was nothing they could do about it. Another writer I know was offered an extremely flattering deal, with a generous royalty of 50% (it’s usually 7.5%), but they were switched on enough to think it might be too good to be true… looking at the contract, we found an extra paragraph pasted in, in a different font, that stated that ‘no royalties will be paid to the author until the book is in profit’ with no indication what costs that entailed or when that might happen.
This route might suit some people, but be aware what you’re getting yourself into.
Don’t be impressed by claims that you will retain copyright (you do that anyway by virtue of the fact that you wrote it and your name is on it – and you also don’t need to pay anyone to secure that copyright) or that your book will be distributed world-wide (you can do that yourself from your own kitchen using Amazon’s KDP or similar).
Be vigilant over what you are signing, what the costs are and what rights the publisher will take if you sign their contract. As much as I’ve tried to be balanced in looking at trad and indie publishing, I don’t like the idea of hybrid deals that are often portrayed as more than they are. I believe strongly in the creator-owner model of publishing (whether that’s words, art or whatever). If you pay anyone for their work or their services, then you should own the product of that work.
In conclusion: some questions to ask yourself
- Are you prepared to sell your rights or do you want to own your work?
- How patient/impatient are you? Trad publishing can take years… indie publishing can be much faster.
- What budget do you have? If you have no budget, invest your time and effort in either finding an agent or learning the ropes to self publish well. If you have unlimited budget, think about where you want to put in a way that works for you and your book.
- How amenable are you to working with others? Agents and publishers aren’t just looking for good books that fit their forecasts for future markets… they’re also looking for the type of person they want to work with.
Ultimately, be honest with yourself. I know that I’m fickle, impatient, terrible at working with anyone, awful at being told what to do, and have a limited budget to play with. I love indie publishing because it gives me the freedom to do what I want, when I want, and we’re lucky to live in a time when technology gives us the means to publish professional books to a world-wide audience at the push of a button from beneath a tree in the garden. But I also know writers who love working with their agents and publishers, and love the structure that gives them.
There are ways to do both. I know some writers who publish some of their books via agents with publishers, and publish other books themselves… one of my favourite writers keeps her non-fiction trad and her fiction indie and loves both ways of working.
There are also ways to be part of a community, whichever route you take, and that’s why I love Harvey Duckman & The Robinson House Writers.
If any of this has left you with questions still, please drop me a line to cgh@cghatton.com. I’m very happy to have more of a chat about any of it.
