Traditional vs Independant Publishing

With the arrival of the Kindle 10 years ago, no one could quite predict how this would change the landscape of publishing. 10 years ago the only route to getting your book out there was through a traditional publishing deal, or vanity press, which was pretty much frowned upon by everyone. Sell your own book? Sell out, shill, it won’t be any good, were the cries of literary folk who couldn’t believe the notion that someone would have the gall to publish their own work and they were rightly so. Back then there weren’t the services that there are now available to independent publishers. That being said, there’s still some debate over which is the right path. Ultimately it’s every writer’s own decision, as long as a quality product is being produced then it shouldn’t matter if it came from a big publishing house, or an indie one.

So when I was making my own decision on which route to take, I took a lot into consideration and here’s where I fell on the spectrum.

 

Traditional Publishing

This had been my goal from being a young girl, from the moment I learnt that people wrote books, I wanted to write one and get it out in the world. The pursuit of this started seriously as a teenager, and I researched¹ how to get my work published almost obsessively. I taught myself the art of writing a query letter, finding agents who represent your genre and learnt what I could about the realities of publishing and the timelines involved. Back then, I was all in. Admittedly, I dreamt of fame, being on the New York Times bestseller list, and being a household name. My ‘why’ was very different. But, I did write a query letter that was good enough for an agent to ask to see my manuscript and had a flurry of excitement buzzing around me for days as I waited for a reply.

By pursuing traditional publishing as a teenager and in my early twenties, I learnt to take rejection pretty well and it became something that would be a great life skill. We’re not always going to get what we want and it’s up to us how we respond. When I received my first ever rejection letter it felt like an accomplishment, that I was finally a struggling writer. What I didn’t realise though was that there were so many struggling writers trying to get a traditional publishing deal, that there were so many out there competing for agent’s time that no matter how good you could write, if it didn’t land on the right desk, at the right time, your book was never going to see the light of day.

Safe to say I never got a traditional deal, I’m not a household name, nor have I hit the NYT bestseller list. Two of those things I’m okay with², now that I’m older I no longer wish for fame, or the golden seal of approval by a gatekeeper. I simply want to write a well-told story that captures an audience and create my own success. It’s a long road, but these days, you can get a traditional deal and still have to do all of your own marketing, and if you don’t earn out your advance, then it’s unlikely you’ll get another deal. There’s also a long turn around time to getting your book published, I read it can take up to two years and I’m not someone who wants to take that amount of time.

Independent Publishing

As I started to learn more about the independent publishing route³ a few years ago, it became an avenue that peaked my interest. I could pursue my dream of getting books out into the world without having a gatekeeper stopping me. I started the road to self-publishing back in 2011, when I published a historical romance novel. It sold 100 copies, but it was terrible. It got some good reviews sure, but needed a lot of story development work, a way better cover and proper editing. This was back in the days though when the number of services available to indie authors wasn’t around. In the end, I unpublished the work and subsequently didn’t write for four years. When I returned to writing, I found that I was trying to write that book I’d published four years prior but my heart wasn’t in it. Then it was through podcasts, that I found my new path. Experts in the field were talking about how genre fiction sells more than literary, that a series of books is a good way to find an audience and as I listened, I found myself excited again at the idea of pursuing science-fiction as a genre, something I’d been obsessed with since a child. You see, I had thought that I could only be a real writer if I wrote literary fiction and was going after the literary prizes and that somehow that would validate me as a writer. Instead, I changed my ‘why’ and decided that it was time to write something that not only I found fun, but was commercial. And so I decided with joyful abandon to turn my back on the idea of being traditionally published and am pursuing the independent route.

Now there’s no denying that there are authors who are a hybrid of the two, that they are both traditional and independently published and I can see how this would work on certain projects. I also have to admit, that it’s pretty cool seeing books by Hugh Howey and Andy Weir in bookstores, novels that started out as indie now being made available to a mass audience.

In conclusion…

There’s no right or wrong route to getting into publishing, it’s purely down to the writer and what she wants to gain from her pursuit. There are many pros and cons to both sides and neither is right or wrong. As long as good books are getting out in the world, this is all that matters at the end of the day.

¹ Research is always key, the blog PubRants, was one that helped me immensely and continues to be a great source of information

² I still hope to one day hit the NYT list

³ The site, thecreativepenn.com was invaluable in my education about self-publishing, and always worth checking out.