: I am an unestablished author with a decent book. Should I publish online, or try to find a 'real' publisher? As I understand it, 'breaking into the business' is expensive in terms of time.

I agree with most of the points made in other answers here. But I would add this, having come from a conference where numerous, published authors shared their thoughts on this question.

First, you need to examine one big assumption: "If I have a decent product..." I won't say you don't, however, it was pointed out, human nature being what it is:

1) For the vast majority of aspiring authors, the first novel (and second, and third) aren't really that good. It takes a lot of writing to be able to write well.
2) Human beings are very bad at judging their own recent work (and your friends and relatives are not likely to give you the frank opinions as you might need).

Thus, the risk for new authors who self-publish is that their first novel is mediocre (or worse) and now their name is attached to that. Even if they vastly improve with later books, it is too late, their name is tainted.

That being said, if you go through the traditional publishing route, numerous sets of eyes will review & edit your stuff. If you can get past that gauntlet, you can be assured you have probably not given birth to a giant turd.

Of course, if you go the traditional publisher route, you have to be prepared for a LOT of rejection (Harry Potter books were rejected by numerous publishers).

Full disclosure: I am not a published author, I am just repeating what several published authors said in a large conference (and some of them self-publish too).
Just more stuff to think about. If I self-published, I'd probably still consider engaging an editor, to get that non-biased feedback.

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There's a very simple answer to this question: Self-publish if-and-only-if you excel at sales and marketing, and are willing to relentlessly promote your book (including book tours, interviews, author talks and so forth) and/or if your book would be a natural add-on to your pre-existing business (as a motivational speaker, for example). Self-publishing success stories result more often from exceptional salesmanship than exceptional writing.

(Self-promotion skills would also dramatically increase your success as traditionally published author, but your margins per book will be several magnitudes larger if you self-publish --assuming you don't go through a vanity press and/or do POD.)

If you expect the primary reason that people will buy your book will be the sheer quality of the writing, and not the force of your personality (or your skill at networking), then DO NOT self-publish. You should be aware, however, that your book will probably need to be beyond excellent to even make it out of a publisher's slush pile ("decent" will not make the cut).

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It is a business like any other and obviously the more contacts you have and publicity and financial backing the further you will go regardless of self published or not.

Go into a few bookstores and look at the sheer volume of works pumped out every month and then look online, there are just so many thousands of titles being marketed constantly so in the scheme of things your book no matter how good it is will only have its 5 minutes of fame, if that. Even then it very easily may not because you are not special, there are just too many books out there. If you are someone famous or already well read you may do alright or you could be an unknown and get lucky. Overall like in the movie industry, there are millions of out of work actors, thousands of working poor actors and a select few good or bad actors monopolizing the profit in an industry that has many middlemen.

Publisher compensation is different depending on POD or offset printing and then type of distribution. If you set yourself up as your own publisher and go down the route of POD expect no more than 2.00 per title unit. If you go offset expect to buy in bulk and be able to offload those books to stores with big discounts and returns. Once you understand the business side coupled with the volume turn over in industry the rose coloured glasses will soon be replaced by the hard nosed adopted principles of a working publisher.

Recently I had a highly respected publisher offer to publish my book only if I paid for layout and printing, so times are tough. They had closed their books to any new authors because of lack of money and yet they are a well established independent publisher. The owner told me it makes no difference whether you are your own publisher or not regarding getting reviews or sales. Distribution and marketing is the main thing and from my limited but now quite reasonable introduction to the industry, I'd have to agree.

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Based on the various posts and articles on this hot debate, the general advice is:

First try to traditionally publish, they take care of everything and put the book though the wringer to make it a more salable product, distribute through channels you can't access and reach a great lot more readers than you ever could. Plus, there is a stronger validation and status symbol as a traditionally published author. In exchange of their expertise, however, they grant the author very low royalties' rates. It also may take a couple of years before you see the book in print, and longer before they deem fit to release any royalties to you.
If after up to a year you receive only negative, or non existent, replies, re-take a good critical look at your book, the problem may be there. If you are still convinced that the ms is fine as is and should have been picked for publication, then self-publish.
Once you have a backlist of 5 books or more and an established readership, the choice becomes harder and that 70% self-publishing royalty rate has never been so alluring. Some authors choose an exclusive side, but most use both resources and may use self-publishing for out of print books, un-commercial novellas, novel's companions, or books from the rejected pile.
Also, although some sources argue that there are bridges between the 2 camps, it is rarely true. If you self-publish you have used-up your First Publications Rights, so the book may only be taken up by a traditional publisher if sales are stellar.

As to your second question:

"As I understand it, 'breaking into the business' is expensive in terms of time. If I have a decent product should I put in the effort, or is self-publishing (e.g. with Amazon) enough?"

Some self-important authors clamor, rant, argue, campaign and generally foam-at-the-mouth with marketing pro-activity.

They are so convinced that their book is a marvel that they flog that poor horse until it is nothing but bones. Marketing is not a cure-all; if your project doesn't sell well, fold and repeat. As a writer your job is to write and marketing is a very far fourth or fifth priority. Steven King says it takes about 1 million edited words, or about 10 books to start to master writing.

So, instead of being a quixotic character fighting giants to be heard over the general silence their mediocrity engenders, burn that pile of dung and write us a fresh one.

Some non-fiction books can gain great exposure with an aggressive marketing campaign, but less so for novels. If you are a fiction writer, your job is to write. So, don't go losing time shoving your product down unto reticent throats.

Yet, some effort on your part is warranted for self-published works. A self-published author is a jack-of-all-trades entrepreneur.

It takes quite some timer to self-edit, to format the manuscript in different e-formats, to design the cover art….

As to Marketing, without going over board you need at least some. So, use social networks like Facebook, create an author web-page, blog from time to time…

I hope this was helpful.

EDIT 1, the cover...

Speaking of book covers, I can’t emphasize its importance enough. Many authors who put great time into writing, editing and marketing their books literally shoot themselves in the foot with a substandard amateurish book cover.

People do judge books by their covers. It is one of the great difference between self-published and traditional publishing. That is also why traditional Houses normally do not allow the author to have any creative control over the cover design. It is just too damn important, much more important than the book content as far as the publisher is concerned.

The cover is what sells, not the content!

or as David Aldridge rephrases: "The cover gets it off the shelf, the first part of the content makes the sale."

The content is there to generate a satisfied reader, a fan base, repeat business and recommendations. But the decision to buy is mostly based on looks, i.e. the first impression: the book cover, jacket hook, synopsis, and sometimes a couple of paragraphs. Even an established writer and famous publishing house only marginally help make the decision to buy.

So, either buy a professionally made cover art, or learn to use Photoshop or Illustrator like a pro.

N.B. obviously, since most kindle book covers are black and white, this doesn't apply as much in that case.

EDIT 2, from comments

Does anyone have any backing for the "Some trad. houses even tend to reject new manuscripts by previously self-published authors,(...)" part? It feels like a rumour more than a fact, to me

I edited it out since some feel that unsourced material is worthless. also some other books say the reverse.

my original post was

"Some traditional houses even tend to reject new manuscripts by previously self-published begining or early carrer authors, so you may have to send the manuscript through an alias to start with a clean slate with those traditional publishers."

I read it somewhere and it also makes sense given my understanding of human nature. Since i can't find the source and some posters disagree, i deleted that though i beleive it applies.

You rolled back the "over 90% of the profits" edit - do you have a source for THAT number? Because again, from personal experience, 90% isn't a good number

I beleive that Over 90% of sales is a good approximation that illustrates that the publishers take most of the money. Yet, given that several people disagree with that approximation and perfer a vague statement, i edited it out.

If you prefer vagueness over approximation, then the publishers take an arm and a leg, demand a pirate’s ransom, get the lion’s share and ride the gravy train while the author gets pin money, chicken feed, or a gnat's eyelash worth of royalties.

My personal experience is that there's no trouble going from self-pubbed to trade pubbed, so in the absence of any authority to the contrary, I feel like we should delete that line. Thoughts?

As for the traditional publishers versus self-published rivalry, or lack of thereof, I feel that it depends. Human beings are subjective and very judgy. It is like dating, and judging someone using internet dating over the real thing, some will think there is something wrong with that person, else why would he/she use online services.

If the present manuscript is judged only on its own merit, then yes it is a product and there is no issue as to its provenance. However, if it is the author who is evaluated by an agent, a publishing editor, or the likes, who is aiming to establish a long term relationship, or building up name recognition, then yes I believe it greatly matters. The Q may arise, if they chose self-publishing before, that there is something wrong with their writings, or something else.

Yes that attitude may be slowly changing, but we are biased and the image of that horrendous vanity-press book that an emaciated nervous wreck of a peddling author is trying to shame us into buying is still haunting our collective minds.

So, if the majority of opinions say that there is no problem going back and forth between the two, I am glad to offer a different perspective that could potentially be of use to some.

Also, I tried to be relatively objective in this A. I personally wouldn’t use traditional publishers, not only because of the meager royalties but because of time. None of us is getting younger and I am not going to wait 2-3 years after finishing a book to see it published, by then I would have written other books and moved on to other projects. That industry is a dinosaur scheduled for extinction.

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KB Spangler self published as did Lee and Miller. Let's look at what they did and why it worked. KB Spangler had a web comic This was her primary source of advertising for her books. Her books are a little odd (although not as odd as her comic), but very good. She scared mainline publishers. She had a source of fans. I believe she has published her fourth book.

Lee and Miller have their own publishing company (SRM). They started it because their regular publisher wasn't very good and or did not want to publish some of the stuff they wrote. Now they are with Baen and from what I can tell sales are up.

You are probably better off following What's advice.

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