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How Real Publishing Works

DreamWeaver

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The advance is an advance on royalties: it's how much the publisher thinks you will earn in royalties. With the advance, you get your royalties up front, guaranteed, rather than little by little. If your book sells more than the publisher had estimated, so that your actual royalties are higher than that figure, you get additional royalty payments. If your book doesn't sell as well as anticipated, you still get to keep the advance.

An important difference is that the major commercial publishers--the ones whose authors generally earn the most--use the advance system. A publisher who doesn't offer an advance is likely to be smaller, and not have as wide distribution of titles or the same kind of clout with book stores and other vendors for placement. Bookstore placement is still the major driver of sales. Therefore, the total amount the author earns in royalties when published by a smaller, non-advance-paying publisher is likely to be smaller than the amount the author would have earned with a good-sized commercial publisher who pays advances.

As for paying the publisher...don't. Publishing is much more than printing a book. It involves extensive editing, professional production values, marketing, placement. These are all things the publisher does much better and more in depth when it's their money on the line. Money is a marvelous motivator. A publisher who has invested time and money into your book has a stake in its success. A publisher you pay has no financial stake in the success of your book and it will show in low sales. A publisher who asks you to share the cost doesn't believe in your book enough to support it fully, and it will show in low sales.

Yes, sometimes books put out by the major commercial publishers have poor sales, but at least the author has the advance as compensation. Check sales figures for the pay-to-play publishers and you'll see *all* their books have relatively poor sales, and 99% of their authors are in the hole because they got no advance and they paid to be published.
 
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JulieB

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Money is a marvelous motivator. A publisher who has invested time and money into your book has a stake in its success. A publisher you pay has no financial stake in the success of your book and it will show in low sales. A publisher who asks you to share the cost doesn't believe in your book enough to support it fully, and it will show in low sales.

Quoted for truth.
 

Momento Mori

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Some say you should never pay to publish but yet go with a company that gives advancements.

That seems scary, because they see all monies until that advancement is paid off and you get low royalty payments. That make me think that publisher owns the rights to your book.

Question: What is wrong with the opposite side of the coin? Yeah you may pay a publisher but you may get more royalties. This is just a thought. What do you all think?

It all comes down to this: do you want to make money from your work?

If you do, then why would you pay to be published? Firstly, you're automatically in the red by however much you've paid the publisher. Secondly, assuming that they give you a percentage royalty deal, you're splitting the profits of any books sold and as DreamWeaver says, a publisher who you have to publish most likely won't have any distribution in place to get your books out into the public and won't be incentivised to sell your books in the first place because they've already made the money you paid them.

What you typically see with people who pay or effectively pay to be published is that they spend a lot of time and effort in trying to sell their books and usually they only succeed in selling a couple of hundred. To make those sales they've typically had to buy copies of their own books and they've usually incurred other expenditure - e.g. promotional posters, bookmarks etc. The royalties they receive aren't normally enough to cover those costs.

If you go with a commercial advance paying publisher, then you've got the money up front and in your hands and even if it's not a mega sum, it will usually be a nice sum to have.

MM
 

Hillgate

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The vanity presses pay higher royalties? What's more, 5% of $1,000,000 or 95% of $10?

In either case, the publisher is going to own the publishing rights to your book.

If you sell 5000 copies on anything you're doing amazingly.
 

Old Hack

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There's some wisdom there, but also a lot of opinion. Much of that blog does not correspond with the publishing business I've worked in all this time. Please proceed with caution.
 

honeywestbooks

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This may be a stupid question, but why would the overwhelming majority of writers today bother with agents, publishing houses, etc. when epublishing is really the future? I don't get it...why hassle with all these in between leeches and just cut to the chase, put your stuff out there for sale in ebook form and start making some sales...true, you won't get rich, but you might make a nice sideline income, something realistic that will give you full control over your work and satisfaction of knowing you were able to have fun and enjoy yourself and make a few $$. When I look back at old threads from 2005/2006 it's clear how things are constantly changing...or old websites showing big lists of literary agents that have lonnnnnnnng ago passed out of existence, their "publishing houses" long dead...it's a new age, a new era...I'm not advocating or condoning a drop in quality that is often present in self-published ebooks, but it's not 1952 or 1934 anymore...the "publishing industry" is rapidly going the way of the dinosaur......I say, if you want to write, then WRITE, do an ebook in whatever genre appeals to you, set a realistic price on it, put it out there and see what happens...
 

Old Hack

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Because while the publishing business is changing it's not actually changing as much as some of the more evangelical self-publishers would have you believe; many agents still work hard to build great careers for their client-writers, in ways that writers can't do alone; and print still represents the vast majority of books sold.
 

amergina

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Because E-Publishing is not the same thing as Self-Publishing.

E-publishing may be the future, but that doesn't mean that self-publishing will be the only avenue to e-publishing, or the path that turns out to be the most profitable one for writers (in the long run).
 

yeehah1

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newbie question

18 08 11
I have just come into this and being a complete publishing-what-to-do-virgin, I was wondering:
What or who the heck are PA and POD?

I appreciate there seems to be an issue with them and consider myself well warned, but what are they and why should we stay away from them?

Thanks in advance

Liam
 

DreamWeaver

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Just to add, POD sounds like a good idea--and *is* a good idea in the right context--but currently the cost per copy is high compared to offset print runs.
 

Pepperman

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There are so many strange versions floating around about what publishers do and don't do. I think it's time to give a sort of overview of the process.

<snipped>
Great information. It sounds like the real key to the door is the query. I get the feeling that if you have your ms "cleaned up" by an editing service before you submit, it will be edited by the publisher to his/her specs anyway.
 
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James D. Macdonald

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That's right, Pepperman.

Unless you're self-publishing, paying for a professional editor is generally a bad idea.

Commercial publishers have editors on staff. If a book can be made good through editing, they can recognize it, and will do it. If a book can't be made good through editing, no amount of money you pay will make it good.

You'll hear people saying "Editors don't edit any more!" (Presumbably unlike the good-old-Maxwell-Perkins-days). This isn't true. Editors do indeed edit -- that's why publishers give them paychecks.

Commercial editors have a name for edited slush. They call it "slush." Telling a commercial press that you've had your book "professionally edited" won't make them more likely to buy it. It'll leave them wondering how much of the book is you, how much is the editor, and whether you'll be able to do the revisions that are surely coming.
 

Lucas

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Publishing is a huge interlocking collection of counter-intuitive systems. Understanding it is ... difficult. Just getting an overview takes years.

Here's one thing to keep in mind any time you're trying to understand publishing:

It's about the readers.

When writers talk about publishing often times it sounds like publishing is about agents, editors, publishers, bookstores, and, of course, writers. But that isn't publishing. Readers drive publishing.

There's no one more selfish than a reader standing in a bookstore. The first and only question on that reader's mind is "What's in it for me?"

Readers control book prices, book length, subject matter, styles of writing, and packaging.

Remember that any time someone tells you something about publishing: Reality-check the statement from the readers' point of view. That will keep you out of many kinds of trouble.

Yes and no.

In my country, the more popular a book is, the more it is despised. Most popular books are crime novels, so that could explain it a bit.

On the other hand, if you are publishing a book about a woman who is dying from ovary cancer and moving to a small cabin on an island to "find herself" before she dies, it will receive wonderful reviews.