Lady Senie
asked
Tawna Fenske:
I hope I'm not being presumptuous, but... How did you know whether to self-publish or go through a publishing house?
Tawna Fenske
Great question! I'm what's known as a hybrid author, where I write for several traditional publishers and also do indie. I haven't counted for a while, but probably half of my 50-book catalogue is traditionally published and half indie. My first three books were published by Sourcebooks a little before the indie revolution really blew up, and even after that, I wasn't interested in taking on the added burden of hiring editors and cover designers and shepherding my books to publication. Something switched right around the time Montlake published the sixth book I wrote for them. I'd expected to be writing another 85k-word book but they wanted a much shorter novella (GOING UP) and paid me the same either way, so I wound up with a couple open months in my schedule and thought "why not?" An indie author pal (Kait Nolan) held my hand an showed me the ropes of the self-pub world and STUDMUFFIN SANTA is the result of that. I was instantly hooked! After years in the trad pub world, it was nice to suddenly have some say in my publishing schedule and if a book didn't perform the way I wanted, I controlled things like marketing and cover art so I could switch things up as needed.
Would I have wanted to start right off as an indie author? Probably not. All the publishers I've written for have brought something to the table that I couldn't have done for myself, whether that's generous distribution to bookstores and libraries, or access to editors and promotions that pivoted my career in different directions.
All that to say, there are pluses and minuses to both trad and indie. Thanks for reading!
Would I have wanted to start right off as an indie author? Probably not. All the publishers I've written for have brought something to the table that I couldn't have done for myself, whether that's generous distribution to bookstores and libraries, or access to editors and promotions that pivoted my career in different directions.
All that to say, there are pluses and minuses to both trad and indie. Thanks for reading!
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