Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been doing a thing I’ve never done before. I’m preparing to self-publish—or, as we in the industry prefer to say, indie publish—a novel.
To many authors, this is nothing momentous; in fact, it’s their norm. But I’ve always been prejudiced in favor of traditional publishing, despite its many drawbacks, for several reasons:
- Passing the gatekeepers validates me as a writer. If an agent thinks enough of my books to take me on as a client (thank you, Kimberley Cameron!), and if an acquiring editor thinks enough of a manuscript to champion it, and if a whole committee thinks enough of it to offer me a contract, I know at least the book won’t make my friends and relations embarrassed to know me.
- I have a team behind me in the production process. Every publisher I’ve worked with has had good editors, skilled designers, publicity & marketing people lending their professional efforts to launch my book into the world. I may not have always been completely delighted with every aspect of the process, but at least I didn’t have to do it myself, and I believe in the power of collaboration enough to be confident that the totality of the end result is better than I could have produced on my own.
- I can leave the pros to get on with it while I go on to write another book. Yes, there’s always stuff for the author to do—reviewing edits and proofs, answering questionnaires, the dreaded promotional phase—but fundamentally, the ball is in someone else’s court. I know all too well from the experience of the last few months how distracting it is to have several books in various phases of the process at once. Some people can happily multitask to that extent, but I am not one of them.
- Some amount of money is more or less guaranteed to come in. Most of my novels have been sold for an advance, and even those that were contracted “on spec,” as it were, have sold or will sell to at least some portion of the publisher’s established customer base. The royalties may be pitifully low, but they do arrive. With my new venture, despite the higher royalty percentage, I can’t be sure I’ll make back the money I’ve invested in cover design and production expenses.
- My books can appear on bookstore shelves without my having to buttonhole bookstore buyers and beg. And I get to say, “I’ve been published by _____.” There’s still a little bit of prestige attached to that, for the time being, at least.
So why did I decide to test the indie waters with this upcoming book, Justice with James?
Because it’s the seventh and final volume of a series. The previous publisher didn’t like the sales numbers of my last few books, so they weren’t willing to take this one on. No other publisher in their right mind would take on the last volume of an orphaned series. (And you know I wouldn’t want one who was out of his wits.) But the book was completed before I knew it would be orphaned, and I believe there are a few fans of the series out there who would be happy to visit with Luke and Emily one last time.
So Justice with James will hit the virtual shelves of Amazon on April 15, when all my Orthodox friends have had a couple of days to recover from Pascha.
If you’re a writer trying to decide which publishing path to pursue, please don’t take my experience as normative. For many people, indie publishing is absolutely the best way to go. You have control over every aspect, you keep all the rights to your work to exploit any way you want, and you get a much bigger piece of the pie.
The only drawback is that you have to bake the pie yourself. And I’ve never been much of a baker.
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