With my first novel finally nearing completion after three years of work, I am soon going to have to make an important decision. Should I try to find an agent and go the traditional publishing route, or should I take my chances with self-publishing?
I have ready many articles on the matter and listened to a variety of opinions, all helping me arrive no closer to a conclusion. Well, maybe a little.
From what I have gathered, those who compile short story collections find success in self-publishing. They can price their books low on amazon and other such sites and sell large volumes, but they typically have a difficult time entering into traditional publishing. Their collections can range in size from a brochure to an encyclopedia, and at such a low price they will always sell.
My work, on the other hand, is one full story: a novel. 380 or so pages of scifi-western adventure. My instinct is to give a go at finding an agent who, in turn, should be able to find me a publisher. But I have a deep-down desire to go for the more modern route and give it a go with a company such as amazon or lulu.
Either way, I know it’s going to take a crapton of work. Just because I am finished creating the novel doesn’t mean anyone wants to buy it, or even read it. The first-impression appeal of sel-publishing is that I have to put very little of my own money up to actually get the book published. With companies willing to put the book up for sale and publish it as copies sell, I should be making money, not spending it. But there is little chance that the novel would sell to anyone other than my friends and family. I would have to make sure the book is well edited (better than I can do myself) which means dropping money on an editor, and I would have to help promote the book to actually give it a chance to sell, which means dropping an even larger pile of money. This guy on reddit seems to have it down, but he is a short story writer. He admits that some of his published works are as short as 10 pages long, which sell easy at 99 cents a pop.
Traditional publishing is a whole other monster. I could spend years searching for an agent who wants to sell my story, and it could take that agent ages to sell it to a publisher. That’s hoping that it would eventually sell, and I would still have to put up my own money for promotional purposes. Traditional publishing is a shrinking industry, especially so with the smaller, independent publishers due to the growing self-publishing fad. The chances of a new fiction author actually making it through the grapevine (I actually typed gravevine, what irony) is next to nil. David Carnoy of CNET explains his trials with traditional publishing:
“I worked on it (his novel) for several years, acquired a high-powered agent, had some brushes with major publishers, then, crickets. Way back when, say, a dozen years ago, a single editor could acquire a book, but today a whole board is usually required to sign off on a project, especially when a big advance is involved. Worse yet, the traditional book-publishing business has fallen on hard times, with layoffs and news that vaunted old publishers such as Houghton Mifflin have literally put the freeze on acquisitions. In short, it’s ugly out there, particularly for new fiction writers.
I could have tried to go for a small publisher, but I was told mine was “a bigger book” with more commercial aspirations and prestigious small publishers were interested in more literary tomes. I also learned that many small publishers were being wiped out by the “self-publishing revolution,” a movement that’s not so unlike the “citizen journalism” or bloggers’ revolt of recent years that’s had a major impact on mainstream media, including this publication. The basic premise is anyone can become a small publisher. You call the shots. You retain the rights to your book. And you take home a bigger royalty than you’d normally get from a traditional publisher–if you sell any books.”
That “if” in the last sentence is the most frightening part of both traditional and self-publishing. I can see a well-known journalist or famous humanitarian having great success with self-publishing and traditional publishing alike, but what advantages does your average schmoe like myself have?
Writing this post may have helped push me towards a decision, but it’s one I do not have to make yet and so I will not. Maybe one of you will be able to enlighten me, be able to give me the epiphany-inducing advice I have not been able to find elsewhere.
I still have to actually finish the damn thing, first.
