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Just curious...
How important is traditional publishing to your writing and writing career?
And why?
How important is traditional publishing to your writing and writing career?
And why?
My view: why would I want to reduce the pool of potential sales focusing on ebooks and/or audiobooks only?
As a genuine old-fart, I much prefer e-readers for all the reasons Marissa D mentioned. Printed books are hard to read for me (and my wife, and our friends that read), often because the contrast between the words and background, or the font is too thin or small. Restaurant menu's give me fits as well - who thinks that writing a list in a tiny thin font with an image in the background is a good idea?
What do you mean by "traditional publishing"?
Trade publishing in general? Publishing with one of the "Big 5" publishing companies? Publishing only in print? Hand printing your manuscript into folios and binding it yourself? Illuminating your own book?
Having a little better idea of you intentions will help inform my reply.
We have a thread on 'Traditional Publishing' and what it means, going back all the way to papyrus (and probably further). But for forum purposes we try to stick to the appropriate terminology since there are terms like 'traditional publishing' 'indie publishing' that are very commonly mis-used and misunderstood.Keeping it open ended on purpose, since finding out what people interpret "traditional" publishing is interesting and informative all on its own.
I'm for any form of publishing that provides someone else to help with sales and marketing. There are skills that I can acquire, but I really, really dislike a lot of it, and I'd hate the amount I'd need to do if I self-published. (I'd probably hire someone to help, and thus end up with more losses than profits!)
How important is traditional publishing to your writing and writing career? And why?
For me, very. Older adults have many problems with reading ebooks or listening to audiobooks. Some are: Presbycusis (loss of hair cells of inner ear, diminishing the ability to detect high-pitched sounds and consonants); presbyopia (near-sightedness) with a diminished sensitivity to low light makes reading harder. Eye fatigue, using computers longer with physical problems, may make older adults not want to read ebooks.
When I was earning my degrees, I came across many students in their 40s and up who could only read PDFs if they printed them. This was expensive for them, holistically.
My view: why would I want to reduce the pool of potential sales focusing on ebooks and/or audiobooks only?