The Sixth Screwup

Should I go with a traditional publisher or should I self publish?

If you are a new author and a publishing company is willing to publish you... something is probably wrong.  It might not be anything much, but whatever it is... it will probably amount to you not making much money.  It's actually pretty likely that you'll lose money.  

I see stuff all the time where new authors are asking if it's normal for publishing houses to ask their authors to put up money to get the ball rolling.  No, this is not normal.  Do not work with them.  

Here's how publishing works roughly.

You go into Chapters (or another book store), and you buy a book that costs $20.  Immediately, 40% (or $8) of that is going directly to Chapters just to keep your book on the shelf.  Of that $20, approximately $3 is paying for the book to be printed, $2 is paying for the shipping from the printer to the store, $5 is going to the publisher (which pays for the editing, cover art, design, marketing, and ads), $2 goes to the author (less if the author has a literary agent). 

If you self-publish, you pay all those fees yourself.  You pay for the printing, shipping, editing, cover art, design, marketing, and any ads.  If the bookstore fails to sell your book by a deadline, they may keep your book and sell it for whatever they can get for it.  As soon as a book in a bookstore is discounted, you can bet your booty-tailed-britches the author is no longer getting paid.  As a matter of fact, the author or the publishing company is losing money.  If the book store can't sell your books at all, a box of books to arrive at your house.  You may be able to sell them yourself, but also... maybe not.  Still losing money.

This means that a publishing company that does print books basically won't take you on unless they're certain you can bank.  These days, they mostly recruit independent authors who have already have a huge following.

Selling your own print books is a lot like selling Avon or Tupperware.  This means that people who love you and want to support you will buy your book. Once that dries up, you'll run out of people to sell to.  The people who know and love you probably won't enjoy reading your book.  I know that sounds rude, but it doesn't have much to do with your writing.  Reading things written by people you know is weird.  It's a weird experience.  They might not want to read any more of your books.  Don't take it personally.  You are going to need to find a bigger market than the people you know if you're going to survive.  

From the math I presented earlier, you've probably figured out that you are going to need to sell books into the tens of thousands in order to even make this worthwhile even as a side hustle or to come close to making minimum wage.

Put simply, you are not going to be able to find a publisher who isn't full of crap.  If you try, you will waste a lot of time trying... unless you already have an in with a publishing house.  

Personally, I think you should wait a bit before investing a lot of your resources in print books.  Sometimes they're flawed and you can't sell them.  Only order a few and see how it pans out.  

Next time we'll talk about ebooks.