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I’ve helped savvy authors transition their books away from traditional publishing houses, newly publishing authors make informed decisions to pursue other options, and even had personal experience publishing under my own traditional contract. Here are the top 7 or so reasons to re-consider holding out for that traditional contract and self-publish today…

7 – Traditional publishers lose money on over 85% of the books they publish, so they only accept 2% of those that are submitted.

6 – Traditional publishers typically accept manuscripts only from established authors who have already demonstrated a proven platform.

5 – Authors lose all control of their content during the editing process with a Traditional Publisher.

4 – Authors must still invest an enormous amount of time, energy, and money promoting a traditionally-published book.

3- Traditional Publishing: Authors typically receive 5-10% royalty on the wholesale price of the book, and from that have to give 15-25% to their agent. Do the math.

2 – The majority of books published by Traditional publishers go out of print within 3 years. Many books that are stocked on book shelves remain stocked for as little as five weeks before being returned, unsold, to the publisher.

1- Traditional publishers acquire all rights to your book and keep them, even when the book goes out of print or the publisher goes out of business!

– Karl Schroeder

Paraphrased from the pen of an insightful publishing executive:

Sometimes choosing exactly the right words can be difficult, especially with so many available in the English language. So many contexts. Specific syntax. Audiences. What a remarkable discovery was the thesaurus. I dare say discovery not invention, because hey, wasn’t it inevitable? As writers, we’d be lost without it. Even among the most encyclopedic, how can we deny the thesaurus as an invaluable tool?

When Peter Mark Roget first published the thesaurus in 1852, die-hard dictionary-purists most likely refused to recognize its value. How many years or generations must have passed before the thesaurus and dictionary were to coexist in compliment of each other as they do now? No one thinks twice about picking up the one most appropriate at any given time.

It would be futile to engage a conversation regarding which is better – the dictionary or the thesaurus. They serve different functions. Need several definitions of a word to choose from? Pick up the dictionary. Need to choose the best definition? The thesaurus will deliver.

Let’s consider self-publishing as the thesaurus. The traditional publishing houses in New York are the dictionaries. One isn’t better than the other – they are just different. Serve different ends in the broader order of writing. But all writers, even dictionary-purists, would do well to consider using both. Brings to mind our recent news about Steven Covey’s decision to self-publish.

Food for thought as you keep up the most important task – writing.

–          Karl Schroeder

August marks the one year birthday of our blog!  Over the last year we have offered lots of tips and advice about self-publishing, before and after the publishing process.  We welcome feedback and suggestions if there are topics you’d like us to cover, so please let us know.

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