When I began my journey towards publication a second time in 2016, I discovered there are now two paths to becoming a published author: traditionally published and independent or “indy publishing.”
Traditional Publishing
Traditional publishing is dominated in the United States by the Big 5. In the USA, the Big 5 is a term used to refer to the five largest and most prestigious publishing companies: Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster. Thanks to an anti-trust trial from 2022, we now know an awful lot about the practices that dominate this industry. If you want to learn more, check out Department of Justice (DOJ) vs. Penguin Random House (2022).
These five publishing houses account for 77 to 91% of bestselling titles in the U.S. book market each year.
But book publishing is a thriving business filled with risks according to the findings in the DOJ v PRH trial. Here’s a quote from the New York Time’s analysis of the trial:
By most measures, publishing is thriving. In any given year, hundreds of publishers in the United States release around 60,000 books. From 2012 to 2019, print book sales grew by more than 20 percent, from nine billion to 11 billion, Mr. Dohle testified. And book sales were strong during the pandemic, rising by another 20 percent from 2019 to 2021, he said.
But the trial highlighted a surprising fact: A minuscule percentage of books generate the vast majority of profits.
During their testimony, Penguin Random House executives said that just 35 percent of books the company publishes are profitable. Among the titles that make money, a very small sliver — just 4 percent — account for 60 percent of those profits.
To put it another way, if we looked at the Big Five’s catalog in sets of 100, these publishing houses are making a majority of their annual profits on the back of 4 major bestselling authors, 31 other authors actually make the company some money, and the 65 other authors lost the company money.
If your dream is to become a bestselling author akin to Colleen Hoover, Hugh Howey, James Patterson, or Bob Woodward, recognize from the outset that the path is long, full of obstacles, and there are no guarantees you’re going to strike it rich. Perhaps your odds are better than the star high school football player playing in the NFL (less than 1%), but only slightly.
The Pathway
Becoming traditionally published begins with developing your craft. At the end of this post are some exceptional writing resources, and I recommend reading all of them. You also need to become an expert in your genre (fiction or nonfiction). That means reading a great number of books each year within the genre you hope to one day dominate or redefine.
Rule #2 is to write often. Write short stories, write chapters, engage in weekly writing prompts, perform research writing, and submit your writing to critique circles. Get as much practice as you can in order to hone your skills.
Never attempt to publish your first manuscript. Write it and then toss it into a drawer for safekeeping. You’ll make more mistakes than will be fixable by even the most talented editor on your first try. Get the bad first book out of your system and then move on to book #2 as quickly as you can.
Once you have a completed second manuscript, you’ll need to find a literary agent. Agents help you network with publishers, help you negotiate your deal, and advise you on which deals to take and which to ignore.
Once you have a manuscript and an agent, it’s time to develop the perfect pitch letter for your agent to deliver to publishers, enticing them to give your manuscript a chance. For a wonderful guide to pitch letters, read more here.
Getting Paid to Write
Traditionally published authors tend to make all of their money in advance checks. Only the authors who fall into that 4 out of every 100 will likely see royalty checks worth cashing on the sale of their actual books. So, how much should you expect to see in an advance check? Once again, that varies greatly and is entirely at the discretion of the publisher. It’s often driven by how badly they want to publish your book and how much they might be worried that you’ll take your book elsewhere. An unproven nonfiction author might get a $5,000 advance to write their first book, and that might be the only money they ever earn for publication. It might be true that fiction authors with a decent readership would realize only $10,000 or $20,000 a year in advances. This reality may shed some light on why more and more authors are turning to the independent publishing route.
Traditional Publishing Process:
- Sign a contract with a publisher.
- Work with the assigned editing team to rework your manuscript, taking into account their required changes.
- Set deadlines and processes for receiving feedback.
- Complete the manuscript and submit it for copy editing.
- Receive copy editing back. Make more changes.
- More changes. More rewrites.
- More editing. More changes.
- Deadline and publication date announced.
- Work with the publisher’s marketing department on the author bio, headshot, and back cover copy.
- Finalize and lock your manuscript.
- Pitch your next work to your editors to gauge interest in a next writing advance.
- Return to step 1 and repeat.
Independent Publishing
An increasing number of authors are choosing to publish independently. Their reasons vary from writer to writer, but indy publishing offers authors complete control over their writing (content, pace, and rights). It shifts the earning potential from advances to actual says and royalties and allows authors to be masters of their own catalog, allowing them to publish works on demand via all the major retailers as well as direct-to-reader sales via their own websites.
Independent Publishing Skills
To publish independently you may or may not need exceptional skills in terms of writing craft, but you will also need more than entry level skills in these areas as well:
- Digital Marketing (Facebook, Amazon)
- Website Development and Management
- Editing (Developmental, Copy, and Line Editing)
- Digital Design (Covers, Ads, Social Posts)
- Public Speaking (Video, In-Person Events)
- Community Management (Email, Social Networks, etc)
Keys to Independent Publishing
Rule #1, just as with traditional publishing, you must first develop your craft. Read books on writing craft. Read ten to twenty titles a year in your genre. Rule #2 is to write often. Write short stories, write chapters, engage in weekly writing prompts, perform research writing, and submit your writing to critique circles. Get as much practice as you can in order to hone your skills.
The advice for traditional authors is the same for indy authors: never attempt to publish your first manuscript. Write it and then toss it into a drawer for safekeeping. You’ll make more mistakes than will be fixable by even the most talented editor on your first try. Get the bad first book out of your system and then move on to book #2 as quickly as you can.
The great news is that once you have the first draft written, you’re ready to make some investments. Here is the order I recommend:
- Pay a developmental editor about $200 to read the first two or three chapters of your book and give you their feedback. Does the book “work?” Is the writing of sufficient quality? Are the mistakes repairable? Get this advice early. Seek a second or third opinion if necessary, but if the honey opinion of people you are paying to critique your work is that you don’t have what it takes to produce commercially viable works, reexamine whether or not this is the right path for you and your reasons to stay on it if you ignore their input.
- Develop a budget for your book, estimating total costs for editing, cover design, website hosting, and initial marketing. Consider a Kickstarter campaign to help you raise funds if you cannot invest the funds in your budget yourself. Your first book should cost you less than $5,000 to publish, and it should be possible to raise that amount on Kickstarter.
- Select a developmental editor to work chapter by chapter with you on the book so you can complete rewrite #1. You read that correctly. You’re going to re-write this book several times. I once heard it said that the first draft is the author telling the story to themself. The second draft is the author telling the story to the reader. And every edit after that is about getting the book to be something a reader would be willing to pay their hard-earned money to read.
- Rewrite the book and prepare for copy editing.
- Hire a cover designer and settle on a title.
- Pick a pen name or write under your given name.
- Hand the book over to the copy editor and get to work on your author website.
- Decide if you’re going to publish exclusively with Amazon or go “wide,” which means make your titles available on as many retail locations as possible by foregoing the exclusive royalties Amazon would pay you per read page.
- Receive your edits back from the copy editor. Get to work on revising the book (again).
- Build a launch team and street team to help you launch your book.
- Select a book launch/publication date. This is now your working deadline.
- Consider again using Kickstarter to fund your book’s publication.
- Hire a line editor.
- Distribute advance reader copies or beta copies to people you trust and who know your genre. Get their feedback and make more revisions to your work.
- Buy ISBN numbers.
- Put your book on preorder on Amazon.
- Work on the back cover copy for your book. Have someone edit it.
- Give the back-cover copy and cover feedback to your cover designer for final design.
- Get endorsements or quotes to use on your back cover.
- Receive line edits back and make changes. Lock in the manuscript.
- Purchase typesetting software like Vellum (Mac only) to develop the files you need for digital and print publishing.
- Typeset the work. Discover numerous typos and go nearly mad trying to fix them all before the deadline.
- Configure your book and upload the final copy to your distributor sites (KDP Amazon, Apple, Ingram Spark, Draft2Digital, etc)
- Announce the publication via a media blitz that may include podcast appearances, book signings, book festivals, and local media interviews.
- Send launch day/launch week emails to your email list encouraging them to buy the book.
- Encourage and seek reviews of your work, especially by your launch team.
- Find mistakes. Make changes, and upload new copies to all sites distributing your book.
Exclusive vs. Wide
Amazon accounts for roughly 50 percent of all books sold each year (digital and print) in the United States. When you publish on KDP exclusively, you earn certain benefits such as higher royalty payments, Amazon-driven marketing opportunities, and royalties per page read. The downside is that ebooks may not be sold or given away for FREE by any other distributor, including our own website. This is what it means to be “exclusive.”
Wide is a term that means that as an independent author, you distribute your ebooks, print, and audiobooks via a wide distribution network using sites like Draft2Digital, Ingram Spark, or your own efforts one by one to distribute the work widely. Most wide authors also sell their books directly to readers using print-on-demand services.
Royalty Expectations
Amazon requires that ebooks be priced at $9.99 or less to be sold on their site. Authors are eligible for either a 35% or 70% royalty on their sold works after printing and distribution costs are accounted for by Amazon. The royalty rate is determined by you the author based on meeting certain requirements of KDP. Print books may be priced at cost or up to several hundred dollars per copy on the Amazon sales site. Royalties are very similar to these structures on other venues such as Kobo, Apple, and B&N Press, but the sales volumes tend to be significantly less.
Keep in mind that 95% of independent authors will sell less than 2,000 copies of their works during their career. To gain access to that exclusive club of the top 5% of independent authors, you must be prepared to be a great writer with a following and a highly capable marketer.
The 5-year versus 10-year plan
It takes time to build a platform (brand) as an author as well as a loyal readership. Most successful, profitable indy authors point to having a catalog of at least 4-6 books before they start to realize significant income that could realistically support them or their family. That is why most indy authors are on a 5 or 10 year plan to achieve succss.
Independent Publishing in Entrepreneurship
If you want to know how to make money publishing independently by investing nothing in the enterprise, you’ll be better off getting a full-time job that pays well enough to generate some extra earnings that you can invest in your publishing career. Very few entrepreneurial endeavors can grow without capital investment, and publishing is no different.
Why is money needed? Consider these expenses:
- ISBN Numbers ($30-$150 per book version)
- Website hosting and online storefront fees
- Email systems fees
- Cover design
- Editing contractors
- Accountants
- Annual legal filings
- Other contractors (web design, photography, digital marketing management)
Legal Safeguards
Before you publish your first book for distribution, you’ll absolutely want to protect yourself from legal liability by forming or joining an LLC that can enjoy the rights to distribute your book. This is a very important legal shield to protect the unassuming author from losing their worldly possessions to legal challenges against them.
Where to Start
Resources
Reedsy.com
Authormedia.com
Books
- Elements of Style
- How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method by Randy Ingermanson
- Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell
- Getting into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn from Actors by Brandilyn Collins
- The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman
- 5,000 Words Per Hour: Write Faster, Write Smarter by Chris Fox
- Self Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King
- The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business Paperback by Charles Duhigg
- Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need by Blake Snyder
Websites
Tools
- Grammarly
- Sudowrite
- Plotter
- Bookfunnel
- Kit.com
- BookBub
- Amazon KDP
- Draft2Digital
- Ingram Spark
- Book Vault
- Author’s Republic
- Eleven Labs
- Bluehost.com
- Booksprout.com
- Book Awards Pro
Podcasts
- The Novel Marketing Podcast
- Authors Talking Bookish
- The First Draft Club
- The Six Figure Author Experiment
- Write Out Loud
- Writing Excuses
- Cover to Cover
- Fiction Writing Made Easy
- How to be an Author
- Inspired Writer Collective
- Publishing Rodeo Podcast
- Self Publishing School
- The Author’s Dilemma
- The Brewing Fiction Podcast
- The Creative Penn Podcast for Writers
More to come as I continue to update this post.
