Publishing Then and Now: New Options

While presenting at a writer’s conference today the Intrigue Publishing crew talked about the publishing options available to writers today. At one time self-publishing carried a huge stigma, and the bigger your publisher the better. This is no longer necessarily true. What changed? Well, if you will allow me to wax nostalgic for a bit, let’s compare today’s publishing landscape to the situation 20 years ago.
THEN – books were hard cover and paperback.NOW – ebooks are the choice of many readers.
THEN – books were sold in bookstores. .NOW – books are sold in Walmart, Target, drug stores, Costco, and on line. Amazon.com is the world’s biggest book seller. Plus there are ibooks and ebooks for several platforms.
THEN – Printing was an expensive processNOW – Printing is inexpensive and the print on demand process means you can make books one at a time if you want. Plus, e-books cost practically nothing to create..
THEN – Authors sold books to agents, who sold to publisher, who sold to bookstores, who sold to readers.NOW – Thanks to the internet, authors have the option to sell directly to readers
THEN – There were many large publishers to submit to.NOW – There are few big publishers, but lots of small publishers, vanity publishers and Print on Demand publishers.
THEN – big publishers maintained mid-list authors who could build a readership over time.NOW – big publishers only want blockbuster writers.
THEN – It was very hard to get published, but there were lots of book buyersNOW – It’s never been easier to be published, but never harder to sell books.
So how does a writer decide if he wants to be published by a major imprint, place his or her book with a small press, or self-publish? There are a lot of factors to consider. For example, there's the question of submissions.
To get your manuscript considered by a major publisher you must have an agent. Random House and Simon & Schuster only accept manuscripts submitted by agents. Once your agent submits to them months could pass before there is a response. In contrast, small presses do accept and in fact generally prefer un-agented submissions and will respond in weeks. Of course, if you choose to self-publish, you don’t have to submit anything to anyone. When you think your book is ready, you can put it out there.

But there are several other factors to consider before making the choice. I’ll get into many of them next week.