Is traditional publishing phasing out? Is self-publishing eventually going to be the new norm? Probably.
People in the publishing industry have been aware of this for a long, long time. The trend has been occurring almost since the turn-of-the-century. It will be good for some people, and not so good for others, but nothing is going to stop it.
I just spoke to a friend of mine who told me that he is, “at his wits end trying to figure out how to market and promote his book.”
You would think he’s self-published, right?
He’s not. He’s traditionally published with a legitimate boutique publisher, but there’s no traction, no sales, not even a podcast booked for him. Well! That dirty rotten publisher, right? Not so fast. Publishers and authors alike are caught in the crossfire of the new trend toward independent publishing, and whether or not it’s good news for you as an individual, that trend is not going away. It was always hard to get traditionally published, but it’s only going to get more difficult as time goes on.
Also, traditional publishing can’t offer what it used to anymore. This means that although it’s more difficult than ever to get a traditional book deal, you get a lot less for it if you do. That’s not an ideal situation by anyone’s standards. Of course, authors who simply need the validation of a publisher's imprint is something entirely different, and I’m not addressing those types of authors in this post. Authors whose goal is to sell books need to carefully evaluate everything before they make a decision.
Many people seeking traditional publishing have the belief that once they sign on the dotted line, the publisher will “do everything else.” That was true.
In 1975.
Certainly, like any other industry, there are incompetent publishers who are dabbling in it as a side thing (it's a free country) and don’t have the reach, resources, and expertise to do it properly. Anyone can “put a book out there,” but trad publishers should be able to do a lot more than list a book, and if they’re not, it’s probably not a company you want to go with. But that is also a separate issue to be addressed in another post. We're talking about legitimate publishers, regardless of their size, and I am not speaking of any one press, specifically, regarding anything I say here.
Yes, YOU are responsible to market and promote your book.
People in the industry have noticed the new trend: the burden of marketing and promoting being primarily one that the author is responsible for. If you’re not aware of this trend, then you’re probably not familiar enough with the publishing industry to understand the rest of this. If you’re in that category, Google how much the author is responsible for these days with regard to promoting their books (Even big five authors) and then come back and read the rest of this.
Anyway, no legitimate publisher is going to tell you that you have to spend money to market and promote your own book, because that makes it sound like they’re not legitimate when they are. Haven’t we been told our whole lives, “if they ask for money it’s a scam”? And of course that’s true. Traditional publishers don’t ask you for money.
BUT… here’s the twilight zone of the whole thing. Even though they’re not asking for money, in most cases, publishers of ANY size continuously stress that the authors themselves have to market and promote their own books in addition to the publisher’s efforts. (Unless you are a top twenty author at one of the big five. Then, you don’t have to do very much. Anyone not in that category will have to do a lot.)
Here’s the elephant in the room: how do you market and promote your own books without spending any money?
The answer is you don’t. There is no free marketing that's effective.
So, it’s true that no one is going to TELL you to spend money, no one is going to ORDER you to spend money, no one is going to INSIST that you spend money. They’ll just insist/order/tell you to, “market and promote your own book.”
It can’t be done without money. Hence, the elephant in the room.
That’s like being told you need to wear a tuxedo to gain entrance to a party, but you tell the person who invited you that you don’t have a tuxedo. They affirm that you have to get one, then, or you won’t be allowed in. You tell them you don’t have any money to buy a tuxedo, and they say, “I’m not asking you to spend any money, I’m just telling you that you have to have a tuxedo to get in.”
Make sense now?
Believe me, the publishing houses don’t like it either. They know you have to spend money to market and promote your own book effectively and I have a hunch it bothers them too. Back in the day, publishers didn't WANT authors messing around trying to advertise their own books, because they knew, correctly, that most authors are not marketers. Now they have to grin and bear whatever fool thing you do to get attention for your work because most are not in a position to do it all for you anymore. Nero is burning, peeps.
I see authors every week, sharing, and tweeting, and posting, and many of them are trad-published. They’re doing that because they don’t know what else to do. It goes against their grain to spend money on advertising because you’re not supposed to have to do that with a trad book deal. BUT…tuxedos are not free.
THAT’S the problem these days. You cannot propel books to success on social media. (Unless you pay for ads.)
Share and tweet, sure. We all do. Just don't expect it to result in more than five sales a year.
All this leads back to the other elephant in the room. It’s the other thing that nobody wants to say because they’re afraid they’ll sound ungrateful to the publisher: if you have to market and promote a book in a very similar manner to that of a self-published author, what’s the point of trad-publishing? Remember, you’re giving up all your rights and most of your money, so unless the benefits of that go way beyond what you could accomplish on your own, it’s not worth it.
Now, tiny little defensive minds will think I’m picking on publishers. I’m not. They have to keep the lights on. They didn’t single-handedly create this situation. They are caught in the crossfire too. More presses than ever before are going out of business, failing, filing for bankruptcy, etc., and it’s not anyone’s fault. There just isn’t a lot of money in publishing anymore. Most people who come into a windfall would be better off opening up a dry cleaning business than trying to start a publishing house. You can Google that for five seconds and find out it's the truth.
The authors didn’t cause the problem, the publishers didn’t cause the problem, it is simply a 21st century phenomenon that's occurred for hundreds of reasons, and it’s not going away. It’s never going to reset to the way it was in the 20th century. If your goal is to sell books, don’t be shy about asking anyone who gives you a book deal what they can offer you beyond what you're already doing. There are certainly some who are weathering the storm better than others. Don’t jump at the first one who says yes, unless the "yes" is all you care about. That advice comes from people a lot smarter than me, by the way.
All I’m doing here is trying to give aspiring authors a reality check. As more and more publishers struggle to stay in business, and the big five find themselves making less money all the time, you just may want to consider self-publishing. It may, in fact, be the new norm in ten years. If you need the validation of trad-publishing, then that’s what you should do. Just don’t go into it thinking that you’re going to be living on book royalties someday. This may shock you, but even many well-known authors have to have side gigs. Times have changed. There’s hundreds of reasons for these changes in the publishing business, but if you’re my age or older and you don’t realize how much it’s changed, it may be time to seriously research it. Write on.
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