Have to agree! I’ve published eight novels - one self pub, the other seven through a niche publisher. They’ve sold pretty miserably. I’ve had a brilliant time doing it! That being said, it seems fairly even odds between (a) they haven’t had the chances their quality merits, and (b) they suck.
I really hope people still care about books; I'm in peripherally involved with organizing a book festival in the Southeast that used to be great, but was pathetic in 2022 and didn't happen in 2023.
Quinn - did you read about the debacle at Readers take Denver this year? I swear people really do care about books :) One of the most delightful and eye-opening experiences I’ve ever had was going to my first RARE event (a romance show) - and watching readers line up for hours for tickets, toting shopping carts full of books for signings, and absolutely swooning when they got a selfie with their favorite authors.
If Decatur Book Festival has the Denver problem of too many people, I would be surprised. However it seems like more passion lies on the fiction/genre side, in comparison w/ non-fiction, which is what I’m invested in.
Everything in modern (tech) culture is designed to make the tech innovator rich and pay the people actually producing something as little as possible. Just like the Rockefellers of old....
This is actually the point Varoufakis makes in his latest book. I'd be remiss if I didn't say I'd love to read Freddie's thoughts on it and its main thesis.
Books continue to sell in the aggregate. Any individual writer's chances of selling more than 20,000 copies are extremely low. Many of our most celebrated writers—the ones with their books displayed on the front tables—don't sell more than 20,000 copies. Selling more than 10,000 copies of a book, with a commensurate advance, is an unqualified success.
Jordan Peterson makes his “lobster” case that we are hard-wired to pursue a place on the social status hierarchy as primitive biological impulse. However, my belief is that we expect to rise in social status. That is why the cohort demonstrating status resentment tend to be well educated and from families of the upper class. These are people positioned already high up on the social status pyramid where space is more limited and competition is more concentrated.
For those starting off lower it is easier to rise. And so there is less resentment except if blocked.
Having just graduated from one of the more revered writing workshops for genre fiction--shout out Odyssey Workshop!--I feel Griffin's frustration. My work has gotten a few nibbles from agents and publishers, but so far no sales. Jeanne Cavelos, the director of Odyssey, helped to enlighten me, not just about plot structures and psychic distance, but about the sheer numbers involved in publishing, and how hard breaking in can be in this day and age. Self-publishing is an option, but if you want to be successful, you won't be just doing the writing, but the marketing, the book covers, the editing, the publicity--all the things a traditional publisher would normally handle. Some have the skill--and spare time--to deal with these things, but I am not one of them. Traditional publishing isn't perfect, but if you dream of your work being read by more than ten people, and you don't have an established platform already, you are going to have to work 80 hours a week to even have a chance that you're self-published book will be successful in today's Kindle Unlimited dominated marketplace. And you're going to have to spend a lot of money marketing that book. I would much rather lose 15% to an agent than have to run another small business on top of the one I already currently run, so traditional is the route for me, but it is good that the option exists for those so inclined. But the last line of FdB's essay is what really resonates for me. If you are a writer of even moderate skill, you aren't competing with 90% of the slush pile, but the top 10% of actually skilled and talented writers. If you're getting rejection after rejection, and you're not getting anywhere at all, you have to look in the mirror at some point. Publishing needs talented story-tellers, and they are looking. If your story has no market, that's tough, but even the strangest, most absurd stories often have one. The problem, sadly, is usually with the teller, not the market.
I’m a reader, not an author. There is no way self published work is going to have much chance of capturing my eyeballs. I don’t have the time or the money or the patience to wade through all of the possible self published material. For good or ill, as a reader I rely on the publishing business as a gatekeeper. I mean, it’s hard enough for me to find modern published books that I enjoy.
I don’t know what the future of the publishing business is, but I’m very skeptical it’s the self publishing framework.
For the most part, you really are unlikely to know who the publisher of a book is - at least with authors who do it professionally. Most set up their own publishing imprint, so unless you only read books from Simon and Schuster or Random House, it’s quite possible you’ve read a few without knowing it.
Could be. I was curious about this so I looked up the publishers of some of the modern novels I have more recently read. I just pulled up 15 that I could think of. The publishers for those 15 were:
Penguin and Random House (5)
The Dial Press (Penguin)
Riverhead (Penguin)
Vintage (2)
Harper (2)
Doubleday
New Directions
Abacus (Little Brown)
Grove Atlantic
So there may occasionally be a self-published worker that manages to catch my attention and is one I end up reading. But it would be pretty rare.
Interesting stuff. I had three book contract offers (all small time) and hated them, so I have now written six books on my own. The first was ghost-written for a client. It was a good book, but it was on the genetic underpinnings of seed corn, so maybe 3 people read it. The second was a set of three small booklets someone paid me $10,000 to write. It sold out 10,000 copies in a year. The third was Financial Management of a Marketing Firm, and it sells for ca. $300 as a PDF in a notebook and makes good money. The fourth was Managing Right for the First Time. it was overwrought, and should have been a good article. Sold about 4,000 copies. The fifth was my first book that really moved the needle: The Business of Expertise. It has sold 17,000 hard copies, and about 45,000 Audible/Kindle combined. The sixth was Secret Tradecraft, and (in one year) it has sold 14,000 paperbacks and about 32,000 Audible/Kindle combined. BTW, Amazon pays me 45% of the list and any discounting comes from their side. Kindle's must be priced below $9.95 if you want the bigger percentage. And Audibles cannot be published unless you have an actual book, and you have no control over that pricing. One thing that I didn't read in any article is one of the more salient points about book publishing: you are largely (not entirely) responsible for marketing your own book, regardless of publisher. I had a lot of experience running a publishing firm (Eisenbrauns, later sold to Penn State), so that part was easy, but the marketing is really a chore. I go on podcasts as a guest and typically do 100+ appearances for each book. It gets exhausting to be interviewed by people who ask the same questions, and who generally did NOT read the book. :) I would say that I'm fortunate because I have made decent money from the books, but you're actually pretty foolish to write a book for that reason. The main reason you write a book? To figure out what you believe. Clarity comes IN and not BEFORE the articulation. Would I publish a book now under a known imprint? Absolutely, but nobody is offering me that and I'm not looking for it. But a "real" publisher would give me a fair bit more credibility.
Freddie, or course self publishing has data. Statista has data, publishers weekly has data, K-lytics has data, ALLi has data, Bookstats has data, Neilson’s has data. Heck, I have data. I work with self published (and a few trad) authors - and I have clients who break 2000 units in pre-orders alone. I have clients who do 5 figures a month. I even worked with an author who was doing 6 figures a month - all self published. The title of the article was silly. People do read books - lots and lots of them. Last year there were some 560 Million ebook sales, 200 M audiobook sales, and some 1.2 Billion hard copy sales in the US alone. Which is a lot of books for no one reads books.
I get the frustration with the bigger houses (and I work with several orphans…) - many didn’t adapt very well to the digital first environment. On the other hand, I find myself frustrated with newer authors who think that the only way to be an author is to get an agent and land a contract with S&S and anyone who doesn’t isn’t ‘real’ - I kind of feel like those folks almost deserve Archway / Author Solutions / etc.
I have the numbers if you really want to know them. Just message me.
I am really happy you landed in the right spot with Trade - truly. I have worked with books that really, really needed to not be indie published, and needed the advantage of a traditional press in order to be successful. But other authors in a lot of genres end up making a lot more money with an indie house or with self publishing.
I think she does, or at least summations of it based on the court testimony. And I understand her point perfectly well - 100% (or more) of the money made in publishing falls in the two categories she identifies (celebrity prints + catalogue bestsellers); the other "vanity" categories are all losers.
It's similar to how, for a time, literally all the money made in smart phones was earned by Apple and Samsung; all other makers lost money.
Her language could have been more precise, and even the point as presented misses some nuance (some titles in the loser categories make money, just as some models of smart phones by other makers made money).
But I understood it perfectly well and don't think it's inaccurate or a misrepresentation of the applicable data. I also think it supports the broader points she and others draw from it and, as it's not inaccurate nor seemingly motivated by the psychological forces you infer, it does not lead to the inferences and conclusions you draw from it here, in my view.
"100% (or more) of the money made in publishing falls in the two categories she identifies (celebrity prints + catalogue bestsellers); the other "vanity" categories are all losers."
This is just objectively untrue. There are tons of books by authors who are authors first making money for the publishing houses. I named one in this post! I don't understand this bizarre attachment to the idea that no original non-celebrity books make money; the absolutely do. Why do you think non-famous first-time offers get six or seven figure advances? Charity?
No, it really doesn’t represent the industry. It represents the numbers of a few actors within the industry who work on a specific business model. “No one buys books” is just NOT true by any measure. S&S is not the entire industry. Moreover, each of these houses have a pile of imprints, from true vanity like Archway to genre imprints like Bookouture - and genre makes a ton of money.
Freddie, or course self publishing has data. Statista has data, publishers weekly has data, K-lytics has data, ALLi has data, Bookstats has data, Neilson’s has data. Heck, I have data. I work with self published (and a few trad) authors - and I have clients who break 2000 units in pre-orders alone. I have clients who do 5 figures a month. I even worked with an author who was doing 6 figures a month - all self published. The title of the article was silly. People do read books - lots and lots of them. Last year there were some 560 Million ebook sales, 200 M audiobook sales, and some 1.2 Billion hard copy sales in the US alone. Which is a lot of books for no one reads books.
I get the frustration with the bigger houses (and I work with several orphans…) - many didn’t adapt very well to the digital first environment. On the other hand, I find myself frustrated with newer authors who think that the only way to be an author is to get an agent and land a contract with S&S and anyone who doesn’t isn’t ‘real’ - I kind of feel like those folks almost deserve Archway / Author Solutions / etc.
I have the numbers if you really want to know them. Just message me.
I am really happy you landed in the right spot with Trade - truly. I have worked with books that really, really needed to not be indie published, and needed the advantage of a traditional press in order to be successful. But other authors in a lot of genres end up making a lot more money with an indie house or with self publishing.
As to whether to self-publish (maximum control, limited rewards) or go the traditional, agent-to-publishing house route, I think the critical question remains, what's your goal? I published a book with a major house; the first draft I submitted was deemed too wonky and academic; I rewrote it completely, resubmitted, and still ended up with heavy cuts. Frustrating. BUT! It did pretty well and more importantly, lit fires under the people I was aiming to reach, and I'm not sure it would have succeeded as it has had the editor not insisted. Now, I'm writing personal essays where my priority is maximum control, minimal intervention. I plan to publish them here and there, with the expectation that maybe fifty people will read them. And that's fine. Also, I don't expect much money from any of it.
Why do you assume self-publishing has ‘limited rewards’ as compared to traditional publishing? Large advances are rare, most authors never see a dime past their advances. Some of the large houses now have digital first imprints, offer 0 advance, but a 50/50 rev share, and I know authors who are doing quite handsomely with this model. I also know many selfpubbed authors who are making 6-7 figures a year. And then, I know stacks of trad published authors who scrape together a living by doing other stuff besides writing. As a group, self-published authors out-earn their trade published peers.
This site is Amazon centric, but does a by genre breakout on a regular basis, where book data by publisher type and sales figures are available - https://k-lytics.com/basic-reports/b2403/
A software program called Publisher Rocket offers the same sort of data, allowing you to see the data and sales figures in most of the genres and sub-genres in the Amazon stores, by country. It also breaks down the % of authors who are self or indie press v. traditional publishing. (It’s generally best not to try and compete in the trade-driven categories, as traditional publishing can afford to lose gobs of money on their ‘vanity’ projects.)
I do want to add some caveats. ‘Legacy’ authors - people who got in early - are making the most money. Self publishing tends to work better in genres, while literary fiction and young adult literature really are best in the hands of a traditional publisher (literary doesn’t usually make money, even in traditional publishing.) Some genres are so overwhelmingly crowded by both trade and legacy authors that it’s really really hard to compete.
As in traditional publishing, the authors who make a lot of money write a lot of books, releasing relatively rapidly. They understand their readers, and they write for those readers. An author who can only write a single literary work every couple of years really should stay in traditional publishing or be writing with really moderate expectations.
Currently there is a trend of strong selling indies getting picked up by traditional houses, based on their sales history. For some, this can free them from a lot of the daily labor of marketing, and help propel their non-traditional back list. For others, well… it means giving up a lot of income they are all ready earning, but is a big ego boost. For authors like Hoover or Howey, it is indeed life-changing, but they won the lottery.
The threat of Amazon Publishing (which should actually be illegal under anti-trust laws, and has been banned in the EU) is omnipresent, threatening both indies and traditional publishing. Amazon Publishing has a number of imprints with specialties in different genres. When Amazon Publishing sees huge activity in a genre category, they will take over those categories with their own imprints.
This is interesting, I appreciate the nuances you pointed out. I am a little skeptical by the ALLi survey grouping independent publishers with self-publishing, as that seems to muddle the takeaway a bit, but I acknowledge that either way it takes some of the shine off the big house author track. Thank you.
In my experience (and I have kind of a lot at this point), ‘small publishers’ that aren’t the imprint of a specific author (that’s where it gets super muddy - most working authors register their own LLC and publish under a brand name) don’t do very well in the marketplace small publishers usually lack the budgets necessary for a working in the author to actually hit the best seller list. I find that Indy Authors do very well publishing themselves so long as they publish commercial fiction in a hot genre and have the means to do their own marketing and advertising
Amazon has several imprints, based on genre. So, for example, Lake Union is their historical fiction imprint, Thomas & Mercer is their Mystery/Thriller genre. The have gobs. (https://amazonpublishing.amazon.com/our-imprints.html)
This isn’t unusual though - S & S has a score of imprints, including a flat-out vanity (authors pay a ton to publish so they can say they are published by Simon & Schuster - which is just shameful!)
One thing that stood out to me in Griffin’s piece is that she seemed convinced something like a “Netflix of books” would destroy the publishing industry. The thing is that enjoying music/films digitally is not the same as reading books digitally. The media matters, and I think it will be harder to get rid of the haptics of printed books than any other thing. I have a Kindle and still there are many books I prefer to read in print.
P.S. I’d love to read more about your thoughts on gatekeepers. It’s something I think a lot about. I’m watching people around me trying to operate without a single gate and demanding the world’s attention and money without working to hone their technique. As much as gatekeepers can unfairly keep some talented people out, sometimes they can serve the function of raising the level of artistry.
It has already destroyed romance. Self-published authors flood the market and put everything on KU, which they can afford because (unlike a publishing house) they don’t have upfront costs, and often they have a day job. Many readers use KU exclusively, and if your book isn’t on there, it’s hard to get readers. Authors can make money, but the amount of revenue per read is abysmal.
A "Netflix of Books"? What does she even mean by that, a library? And is she somehow unaware of how Netflix ended up working out? Because spoiler alert, it's just, what if cable companies all over again but even worse because some pretentious techbro did ayahuasca and thinks he's a visionary saving the world.
this was great! Why I subscribe.
Yep.
"Everything in modern culture is about status resentment"
About as comprehensive and succinct and correct as it gets, stuffed into the subhead.
Have to agree! I’ve published eight novels - one self pub, the other seven through a niche publisher. They’ve sold pretty miserably. I’ve had a brilliant time doing it! That being said, it seems fairly even odds between (a) they haven’t had the chances their quality merits, and (b) they suck.
Good for you. Sales are not a meritocracy. I'm sure you've read bestsellers that aren't as good as what you wrote. It just is what it is.
I really hope people still care about books; I'm in peripherally involved with organizing a book festival in the Southeast that used to be great, but was pathetic in 2022 and didn't happen in 2023.
Quinn - did you read about the debacle at Readers take Denver this year? I swear people really do care about books :) One of the most delightful and eye-opening experiences I’ve ever had was going to my first RARE event (a romance show) - and watching readers line up for hours for tickets, toting shopping carts full of books for signings, and absolutely swooning when they got a selfie with their favorite authors.
If Decatur Book Festival has the Denver problem of too many people, I would be surprised. However it seems like more passion lies on the fiction/genre side, in comparison w/ non-fiction, which is what I’m invested in.
It depends on your area of non-fiction.
Reading this was like being pressure-washed directly in the face.
Everything in modern (tech) culture is designed to make the tech innovator rich and pay the people actually producing something as little as possible. Just like the Rockefellers of old....
It's really something, isn't it?
This is actually the point Varoufakis makes in his latest book. I'd be remiss if I didn't say I'd love to read Freddie's thoughts on it and its main thesis.
The entertainment industry: screwing the talent since 4000 BCE.
Books continue to sell in the aggregate. Any individual writer's chances of selling more than 20,000 copies are extremely low. Many of our most celebrated writers—the ones with their books displayed on the front tables—don't sell more than 20,000 copies. Selling more than 10,000 copies of a book, with a commensurate advance, is an unqualified success.
And that number is considered 5,000 in Canada.
Jordan Peterson makes his “lobster” case that we are hard-wired to pursue a place on the social status hierarchy as primitive biological impulse. However, my belief is that we expect to rise in social status. That is why the cohort demonstrating status resentment tend to be well educated and from families of the upper class. These are people positioned already high up on the social status pyramid where space is more limited and competition is more concentrated.
For those starting off lower it is easier to rise. And so there is less resentment except if blocked.
Damn you, Hedonic Treadmill!
Having just graduated from one of the more revered writing workshops for genre fiction--shout out Odyssey Workshop!--I feel Griffin's frustration. My work has gotten a few nibbles from agents and publishers, but so far no sales. Jeanne Cavelos, the director of Odyssey, helped to enlighten me, not just about plot structures and psychic distance, but about the sheer numbers involved in publishing, and how hard breaking in can be in this day and age. Self-publishing is an option, but if you want to be successful, you won't be just doing the writing, but the marketing, the book covers, the editing, the publicity--all the things a traditional publisher would normally handle. Some have the skill--and spare time--to deal with these things, but I am not one of them. Traditional publishing isn't perfect, but if you dream of your work being read by more than ten people, and you don't have an established platform already, you are going to have to work 80 hours a week to even have a chance that you're self-published book will be successful in today's Kindle Unlimited dominated marketplace. And you're going to have to spend a lot of money marketing that book. I would much rather lose 15% to an agent than have to run another small business on top of the one I already currently run, so traditional is the route for me, but it is good that the option exists for those so inclined. But the last line of FdB's essay is what really resonates for me. If you are a writer of even moderate skill, you aren't competing with 90% of the slush pile, but the top 10% of actually skilled and talented writers. If you're getting rejection after rejection, and you're not getting anywhere at all, you have to look in the mirror at some point. Publishing needs talented story-tellers, and they are looking. If your story has no market, that's tough, but even the strangest, most absurd stories often have one. The problem, sadly, is usually with the teller, not the market.
I’m a reader, not an author. There is no way self published work is going to have much chance of capturing my eyeballs. I don’t have the time or the money or the patience to wade through all of the possible self published material. For good or ill, as a reader I rely on the publishing business as a gatekeeper. I mean, it’s hard enough for me to find modern published books that I enjoy.
I don’t know what the future of the publishing business is, but I’m very skeptical it’s the self publishing framework.
For the most part, you really are unlikely to know who the publisher of a book is - at least with authors who do it professionally. Most set up their own publishing imprint, so unless you only read books from Simon and Schuster or Random House, it’s quite possible you’ve read a few without knowing it.
Could be. I was curious about this so I looked up the publishers of some of the modern novels I have more recently read. I just pulled up 15 that I could think of. The publishers for those 15 were:
Penguin and Random House (5)
The Dial Press (Penguin)
Riverhead (Penguin)
Vintage (2)
Harper (2)
Doubleday
New Directions
Abacus (Little Brown)
Grove Atlantic
So there may occasionally be a self-published worker that manages to catch my attention and is one I end up reading. But it would be pretty rare.
Interesting stuff. I had three book contract offers (all small time) and hated them, so I have now written six books on my own. The first was ghost-written for a client. It was a good book, but it was on the genetic underpinnings of seed corn, so maybe 3 people read it. The second was a set of three small booklets someone paid me $10,000 to write. It sold out 10,000 copies in a year. The third was Financial Management of a Marketing Firm, and it sells for ca. $300 as a PDF in a notebook and makes good money. The fourth was Managing Right for the First Time. it was overwrought, and should have been a good article. Sold about 4,000 copies. The fifth was my first book that really moved the needle: The Business of Expertise. It has sold 17,000 hard copies, and about 45,000 Audible/Kindle combined. The sixth was Secret Tradecraft, and (in one year) it has sold 14,000 paperbacks and about 32,000 Audible/Kindle combined. BTW, Amazon pays me 45% of the list and any discounting comes from their side. Kindle's must be priced below $9.95 if you want the bigger percentage. And Audibles cannot be published unless you have an actual book, and you have no control over that pricing. One thing that I didn't read in any article is one of the more salient points about book publishing: you are largely (not entirely) responsible for marketing your own book, regardless of publisher. I had a lot of experience running a publishing firm (Eisenbrauns, later sold to Penn State), so that part was easy, but the marketing is really a chore. I go on podcasts as a guest and typically do 100+ appearances for each book. It gets exhausting to be interviewed by people who ask the same questions, and who generally did NOT read the book. :) I would say that I'm fortunate because I have made decent money from the books, but you're actually pretty foolish to write a book for that reason. The main reason you write a book? To figure out what you believe. Clarity comes IN and not BEFORE the articulation. Would I publish a book now under a known imprint? Absolutely, but nobody is offering me that and I'm not looking for it. But a "real" publisher would give me a fair bit more credibility.
Freddie, or course self publishing has data. Statista has data, publishers weekly has data, K-lytics has data, ALLi has data, Bookstats has data, Neilson’s has data. Heck, I have data. I work with self published (and a few trad) authors - and I have clients who break 2000 units in pre-orders alone. I have clients who do 5 figures a month. I even worked with an author who was doing 6 figures a month - all self published. The title of the article was silly. People do read books - lots and lots of them. Last year there were some 560 Million ebook sales, 200 M audiobook sales, and some 1.2 Billion hard copy sales in the US alone. Which is a lot of books for no one reads books.
I get the frustration with the bigger houses (and I work with several orphans…) - many didn’t adapt very well to the digital first environment. On the other hand, I find myself frustrated with newer authors who think that the only way to be an author is to get an agent and land a contract with S&S and anyone who doesn’t isn’t ‘real’ - I kind of feel like those folks almost deserve Archway / Author Solutions / etc.
I have the numbers if you really want to know them. Just message me.
I am really happy you landed in the right spot with Trade - truly. I have worked with books that really, really needed to not be indie published, and needed the advantage of a traditional press in order to be successful. But other authors in a lot of genres end up making a lot more money with an indie house or with self publishing.
Well, the operative point is that GRIFFIN doesn't have the numbers; she offers a comparison with nothing to compare to.
I think she does, or at least summations of it based on the court testimony. And I understand her point perfectly well - 100% (or more) of the money made in publishing falls in the two categories she identifies (celebrity prints + catalogue bestsellers); the other "vanity" categories are all losers.
It's similar to how, for a time, literally all the money made in smart phones was earned by Apple and Samsung; all other makers lost money.
Her language could have been more precise, and even the point as presented misses some nuance (some titles in the loser categories make money, just as some models of smart phones by other makers made money).
But I understood it perfectly well and don't think it's inaccurate or a misrepresentation of the applicable data. I also think it supports the broader points she and others draw from it and, as it's not inaccurate nor seemingly motivated by the psychological forces you infer, it does not lead to the inferences and conclusions you draw from it here, in my view.
"100% (or more) of the money made in publishing falls in the two categories she identifies (celebrity prints + catalogue bestsellers); the other "vanity" categories are all losers."
This is just objectively untrue. There are tons of books by authors who are authors first making money for the publishing houses. I named one in this post! I don't understand this bizarre attachment to the idea that no original non-celebrity books make money; the absolutely do. Why do you think non-famous first-time offers get six or seven figure advances? Charity?
No, it really doesn’t represent the industry. It represents the numbers of a few actors within the industry who work on a specific business model. “No one buys books” is just NOT true by any measure. S&S is not the entire industry. Moreover, each of these houses have a pile of imprints, from true vanity like Archway to genre imprints like Bookouture - and genre makes a ton of money.
Freddie, or course self publishing has data. Statista has data, publishers weekly has data, K-lytics has data, ALLi has data, Bookstats has data, Neilson’s has data. Heck, I have data. I work with self published (and a few trad) authors - and I have clients who break 2000 units in pre-orders alone. I have clients who do 5 figures a month. I even worked with an author who was doing 6 figures a month - all self published. The title of the article was silly. People do read books - lots and lots of them. Last year there were some 560 Million ebook sales, 200 M audiobook sales, and some 1.2 Billion hard copy sales in the US alone. Which is a lot of books for no one reads books.
I get the frustration with the bigger houses (and I work with several orphans…) - many didn’t adapt very well to the digital first environment. On the other hand, I find myself frustrated with newer authors who think that the only way to be an author is to get an agent and land a contract with S&S and anyone who doesn’t isn’t ‘real’ - I kind of feel like those folks almost deserve Archway / Author Solutions / etc.
I have the numbers if you really want to know them. Just message me.
I am really happy you landed in the right spot with Trade - truly. I have worked with books that really, really needed to not be indie published, and needed the advantage of a traditional press in order to be successful. But other authors in a lot of genres end up making a lot more money with an indie house or with self publishing.
As to whether to self-publish (maximum control, limited rewards) or go the traditional, agent-to-publishing house route, I think the critical question remains, what's your goal? I published a book with a major house; the first draft I submitted was deemed too wonky and academic; I rewrote it completely, resubmitted, and still ended up with heavy cuts. Frustrating. BUT! It did pretty well and more importantly, lit fires under the people I was aiming to reach, and I'm not sure it would have succeeded as it has had the editor not insisted. Now, I'm writing personal essays where my priority is maximum control, minimal intervention. I plan to publish them here and there, with the expectation that maybe fifty people will read them. And that's fine. Also, I don't expect much money from any of it.
Why do you assume self-publishing has ‘limited rewards’ as compared to traditional publishing? Large advances are rare, most authors never see a dime past their advances. Some of the large houses now have digital first imprints, offer 0 advance, but a 50/50 rev share, and I know authors who are doing quite handsomely with this model. I also know many selfpubbed authors who are making 6-7 figures a year. And then, I know stacks of trad published authors who scrape together a living by doing other stuff besides writing. As a group, self-published authors out-earn their trade published peers.
Do you have data to support that last sentence? What are the mean and median earnings for self-published vs trad published books?
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/92003-survey-finds-self-published-authors-making-gains.html
https://zenodo.org/records/8043463
https://blog.reedsy.com/how-much-do-authors-make/
This site is Amazon centric, but does a by genre breakout on a regular basis, where book data by publisher type and sales figures are available - https://k-lytics.com/basic-reports/b2403/
A software program called Publisher Rocket offers the same sort of data, allowing you to see the data and sales figures in most of the genres and sub-genres in the Amazon stores, by country. It also breaks down the % of authors who are self or indie press v. traditional publishing. (It’s generally best not to try and compete in the trade-driven categories, as traditional publishing can afford to lose gobs of money on their ‘vanity’ projects.)
I do want to add some caveats. ‘Legacy’ authors - people who got in early - are making the most money. Self publishing tends to work better in genres, while literary fiction and young adult literature really are best in the hands of a traditional publisher (literary doesn’t usually make money, even in traditional publishing.) Some genres are so overwhelmingly crowded by both trade and legacy authors that it’s really really hard to compete.
As in traditional publishing, the authors who make a lot of money write a lot of books, releasing relatively rapidly. They understand their readers, and they write for those readers. An author who can only write a single literary work every couple of years really should stay in traditional publishing or be writing with really moderate expectations.
Currently there is a trend of strong selling indies getting picked up by traditional houses, based on their sales history. For some, this can free them from a lot of the daily labor of marketing, and help propel their non-traditional back list. For others, well… it means giving up a lot of income they are all ready earning, but is a big ego boost. For authors like Hoover or Howey, it is indeed life-changing, but they won the lottery.
The threat of Amazon Publishing (which should actually be illegal under anti-trust laws, and has been banned in the EU) is omnipresent, threatening both indies and traditional publishing. Amazon Publishing has a number of imprints with specialties in different genres. When Amazon Publishing sees huge activity in a genre category, they will take over those categories with their own imprints.
What is an imprint, in this context?
This is interesting, I appreciate the nuances you pointed out. I am a little skeptical by the ALLi survey grouping independent publishers with self-publishing, as that seems to muddle the takeaway a bit, but I acknowledge that either way it takes some of the shine off the big house author track. Thank you.
In my experience (and I have kind of a lot at this point), ‘small publishers’ that aren’t the imprint of a specific author (that’s where it gets super muddy - most working authors register their own LLC and publish under a brand name) don’t do very well in the marketplace small publishers usually lack the budgets necessary for a working in the author to actually hit the best seller list. I find that Indy Authors do very well publishing themselves so long as they publish commercial fiction in a hot genre and have the means to do their own marketing and advertising
So fair to say that an unpublished literary fiction author's prospects are just bad all around?
Amazon has several imprints, based on genre. So, for example, Lake Union is their historical fiction imprint, Thomas & Mercer is their Mystery/Thriller genre. The have gobs. (https://amazonpublishing.amazon.com/our-imprints.html)
This isn’t unusual though - S & S has a score of imprints, including a flat-out vanity (authors pay a ton to publish so they can say they are published by Simon & Schuster - which is just shameful!)
I really like getting an inside look at different industries, this was a good one.
And once again, Freddy is here to point why some problem that everyone thinks is so simple with an obvious solution is really not that at all.
One thing that stood out to me in Griffin’s piece is that she seemed convinced something like a “Netflix of books” would destroy the publishing industry. The thing is that enjoying music/films digitally is not the same as reading books digitally. The media matters, and I think it will be harder to get rid of the haptics of printed books than any other thing. I have a Kindle and still there are many books I prefer to read in print.
P.S. I’d love to read more about your thoughts on gatekeepers. It’s something I think a lot about. I’m watching people around me trying to operate without a single gate and demanding the world’s attention and money without working to hone their technique. As much as gatekeepers can unfairly keep some talented people out, sometimes they can serve the function of raising the level of artistry.
It has already destroyed romance. Self-published authors flood the market and put everything on KU, which they can afford because (unlike a publishing house) they don’t have upfront costs, and often they have a day job. Many readers use KU exclusively, and if your book isn’t on there, it’s hard to get readers. Authors can make money, but the amount of revenue per read is abysmal.
A "Netflix of Books"? What does she even mean by that, a library? And is she somehow unaware of how Netflix ended up working out? Because spoiler alert, it's just, what if cable companies all over again but even worse because some pretentious techbro did ayahuasca and thinks he's a visionary saving the world.