Traditional vs Self-Pub SFF Audience

On Amazon at least it’s hard (for me) to tell which is which; there isn’t an obvious ‘this is self published’ label.

Disclosure: I self publish.

My opinion as a reader is that there are a lot of authors self publishing their work these days, and I feel there are more variations in plot as compared to what goes through an agent and traditional publisher.

At the top end of self-publishing there are a load of books that are comparable with trad-published books; check out those that did well in the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off. On the Fantasy reading Facebook groups I follow, s-p work seems to get equal exposure but perhaps those readers are self-selecting. If you follow such groups you will see a lot of recommendations of books that are not in the mainstream stores.

I don't agree at all, but I'm just one opinion.

However, literary SFF struggles massively in self publishing. You would have to be nuts to hope for an income from self pubbed literary sff, so that's an entire subgenre which is missing--the one subgenre which is the most boundary pushing. Too Like the Lightning would have sunk in the self published world, imo.

Generally, indies succeed by targeting markets and demographics very carefully; there's not a lot of room for error and there's not a lot of room for unusual (unless you don't care about money in which case yes, there is some wild stuff out there!)

I doubt there are many people who strictly read one or the other. Most people buy books that look like their sort of thing and don't know a whole lot about publishing.

Things that sell very well in self-publishing often aren't that different to trade published work, because they're the trendy themes that everyone is buying and promoting. Which means romantic books tend to do better than those that aren't, because romance does well regardless of how books are published.

The difference is that self-publishing doesn't restrict to only those things with big audiences, so there's more variation overall. There's space for niches that might not sell enough for a big publisher to be interested. Which also means a wider range of reader expectations, as different niches can end up with their own conventions. But if you're just looking for stuff that looks a lot like trade publishing, you're not going to see a lot of difference in what readers expect.

Phrase much better than my post! +1 to polenth.

At the end of the day, publishers and self publishers follow the dictates of what readers like. Both are chasing sales and trends.

I agree that unless it looks obviously amateurish, people see a book as a book. They don't really worry to much about how it came to be there

I read a lot of published SF and a fair amount of self-pub SF. Unfortunately it's usually very easy to tell why a book was self-pubbed. I think I may be typical of your self-pub audience in that I don't have high expectations for the writing, so long as the story seems intriguing, and I'm eternally optimistic that a book will get better if I just keep reading.

I've had a good number of readers express surprise that my SF novel is self-published. Of course you'll see bad books in SP, but then I've read a number of trade published SF novels that I couldn't even finish, while I've read some really good SP ones. I think the stigma won't go away for some readers, but in general I think more people are realizing there is good quality to be found in the SP world...the trick is how to find it. Someone mentioned the SPFBO, which is nice though sometimes a better book gets knocked out earlier than one that passed on, and the readers seem to mostly pay attention to only those that make the final ten (exception was Senlin Ascends due to Mark Lawrence's championing, and deservedly so).

Princess Of Needles said:

I've heard that paranormal romance does very well in the self-publishing market, but what about books without romance? What about other subgenres?

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Due to the lower barriers of entry, things that you can find a lot more nice interests in self publishing. There's a reason why romance as a genre is such a mainstay, but as far as I know, none of the major publishers really dabble in, or have a line for fantastic romance fiction. And the Twilight surge seems fairly well over for other traditional publishers. So if that's the taste you want to indulge, self published works provide plenty of opportunity.

On the other hand, self publishing is always going to have the problem of authors suffering the Dunning-Kruger effect, and use it as a shortcut instead of polishing, revising, or fixing serious problems with their manuscripts.

Thomas Vail said:

On the other hand, self publishing is always going to have the problem of authors suffering the Dunning-Kruger effect, and use it as a shortcut instead of polishing, revising, or fixing serious problems with their manuscripts.

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This is probably the biggest reason, as a new author, I'm hesitant to jump onto self-pub for my first novel attempt; I'm aware that I've been kinda working in a vacuum on it. The other is I have no real idea about the market or where I fit in it.

...what do people mean by "literary" SFF anyhow?

It's a little nebulous, but some old and new literary titles I would feel comfortable categorising:

-- Shadow of the Torturer (pretty much any Gene Wolfe book)
-- Etched City (Bishop)
-- Virconium (Harrison)
-- Lord of Light (Zelazny)
-- Left Hand of Darkness (Le Guin)
-- Too Like the Lightning (Palmer)


As a general rule of thumb, literary sff books tends to have exceptional writing, incredibly complex concepts, unusual presentation points of view, unusual narrative structures, and engage with wider literature (especially but not limited to, classics).

It's a little nebulous, but some old and new literary titles I would feel comfortable categorising:

-- Shadow of the Torturer (pretty much any Gene Wolfe book)
-- Etched City (Bishop)
-- Virconium (Harrison)
-- Lord of Light (Zelazny)
-- Left Hand of Darkness (Le Guin)
-- Too Like the Lightning (Palmer)


As a general rule of thumb, literary sff books tends to have exceptional writing, very complex concepts, unusual structures or points of view (not mandatory, although it is common), and so on. The break the mold in the best way

I'd add to this list anything by David Mitchell, in particular Cloud Atlas. Other examples would be Philip K Dick, Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse Five in particular) and Margaret Atwood (Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake in particular). Station Eleven from Emily St. John Mandel is another great recent example.

Take a look at the Author earning's report. SFF is killing it in the ebook market which is great news for indies. On Amazon, 90% of all Romance sales are ebooks. Fantasy is close behind with 75%. Then considering that indies account for about 40% of the ebook market (Number of units sold), it must be viable.

I entered my book into this year's Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off, and it's really opened my eyes to the wealth of very talented fantasy authors (spec-fic in general) that are out there. In fact, a fair amount of them have got quite a following, especially the winners and runners-up of previous SPFBO contests. Even a lot of the books that didn't make the semi-finals are still gaining some traction in terms of reviews and sales because they were a part of the contest, and their books are receiving excellent reviews from acclaimed bloggers. Don't knock the benefits of self-publishing, as long as you work hard enough at it.

And, let's face it, the majority of trad-pubbed authors aren't doing that well either; the mid-listers do not get a huge amount of reviews, and their sales are mediocre. I know of one in particular who is having a very hard time getting his recent books to sell, and of course his publishing house isn't exactly pulling their weight for the massive 85% royalty cut they take from sales. You probably haven't heard of half of the traditionally published authors in your favourite genre, because they haven't managed to gain traction and are overshadowed by the top successful names.

Each option has its bonuses, but it's ultimately up to the individual. The one tip I would give to anyone intending to try traditional publishing, BEFORE they've written their novel, is to remember that agents and publishers have quite strict word-count limits; if your book far exceeds what they are accepting (as mine did), save yourself a decade of misery from auto-rejections because your MS is 50k larger than they're accepting (unless you're willing to go through some heavy edits and scrap a large chunk of your baby).

For me, being in SPFBO has connected me with a bunch of friendly book bloggers, fellow authors, and new readers/reviewers. Whether I get into the semi-finals and beyond or not doesn't overly matter; I've already achieved the prize of connecting with some quality folk, and being in the contest has already gained me some new, excellent reviews which positively name-drop some extremely well-known authors in the epic fantasy genre. That is a prize in itself.

heh, Scott, I literally just bought your book before opening this thread! And why? Because of SPFBO. The problem I have with reading self-published books is quality. There is SO much dross out there that usually I just don't bother unless I get a personal recommendation when for the most part trade publishing assures you of a certain minimum publishable quality (with some unfortunate exceptions I've stumbled across). SPFBO and it's many reviewers neatly sidesteps that quality issue by flagging up some of the better submissions so that readers like me know A)Your book exists, and B) That it's worth a read.

Trade publishing might not get you to the peak of publishing but you won't be starting from the very bottom either. Publishers open doors and an author has more of a chance of being noticed and making more waves that way. With Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off and things like it that might be changing for some - and I'm hearing that a science fiction version might also be in the works too.

Again, though, it's creating gates because someone has to gatekeep.

I could easily see it being the case that selfpubbers who don't come with those kind of recommendations, simply don't make it.

Like most readers, I like a good book, full stop. But as others have mentioned, if I don't hear about a book, I can't give it a chance. For self-published work, I'll buy on recommendation (and I'll often look at AWers' work if it's in a genre I read), but I don't generally rummage for random self-pubbed stuff for the same quality reasons others have mentioned.

Self-publishing is incredibly powerful and empowering, but it does create visibility problem that dwarfs the parallel issue in trade pub. Volume alone guarantees you need to pick through a lot more less-than-quality writing to find the gems, and yes, this pretty much means readers are going to gravitate toward some kind of gatekeeper.

Hi, Cameron. Wow, what a massive coincidence that was! Firstly, I do hope you enjoy my book! (enough to give it a review? ) Secondly, I'm very pleased to hear that you're looking at the SPFBO participants. The bloggers/judges in that contest can be tough but fair. There are even some bloggers who aren't judges for SPFBO but themselves have a large following and are very influential for readers who are willing to dip into both publishing waters. You're absolutely right though about the general standard of quality we'd find in both trad and s-p; though trad does have a few unfortunate exceptions, the self-published swamp is literally riddled with them. That's the main thing that makes it near-impossible for the better s-p books to be seen amongst the rest. I follow the stats for how many new books have been published per year, and the number is so staggering it literally made me feel like it was all hopeless in the couple of months after I published my novel. But things like SPFBO are like pieces of flotsam that help us - if we're deserving of their help - to keep our heads above the swamp, and hopefully eventually lead us to comparatively solid ground.

One other point: Lately I've been strongly suspecting that, even though the trad authors from mid-list to lower have got the prominence and visibility of having a publishing house's name on their books, access to a flashy cover, a manuscript that meets a certain standard of content quality and presentation quality, I have a feeling after listening to some of the mid-listers complain about book sales, etc. that they're wondering about going another route. They're probably making between 10-15% maximum from sales royalties, but not actually shifting many units. So, for every mid-lister who is only shifting, say, 100 copies per month, he/she may aswell be self-published and shifting half that amount. If they were, they'd be earning more than twice the royalties from 30+ books per month as they would 100 with a publishing house. But, then again, they could also totally sink if they left the trad pool for the s-p swamp. Definitely a tough game, either way.

There's definitely a qualitative difference between being a trad pub author and being a self pub author. I'm not quite self pub, more of a hybrid thing. I was picked up by Audible for my bobiverse series, and they've definitely done some marketing, but the e-books and paperbacks are self-pub (my agent handles them, but it's still Amazon/Createspace). I've sold well over a half-million units of the trilogy, but I'm still virtually unknown, at least compared to trad pub authors with the same sales level.

I'm not complaining, understand, as this is a case of crying all the way to the bank. And since my CUBA rating leans heavily to commercial, that works just fine for me. But without the big 5 support and a presence in brick-and-mortars, I will probably continue to be one of those authors that you've never heard of who is making a good living at it.

The difference in revenue between self and trad is dramatic, for any level of sales. The big question (and maybe the only question that really matters) is whether a big 5 will be able to generate enough more​ sales for you to make up the difference.

Scott Kaelen said:

One other point: Lately I've been strongly suspecting that, even though the trad authors from mid-list to lower have got the prominence and visibility of having a publishing house's name on their books, access to a flashy cover, a manuscript that meets a certain standard of content quality and presentation quality, I have a feeling after listening to some of the mid-listers complain about book sales, etc. that they're wondering about going another route. They're probably making between 10-15% maximum from sales royalties, but not actually shifting many units. So, for every mid-lister who is only shifting, say, 100 copies per month, he/she may aswell be self-published and shifting half that amount. If they were, they'd be earning more than twice the royalties from 30+ books per month as they would 100 with a publishing house. But, then again, they could also totally sink if they left the trad pool for the s-p swamp. Definitely a tough game, either way.

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I'd think a traditionally-published mid-list author would (with effort to get the word out) be able to bring their existing audience with them at the very least.

Dennis E. Taylor said:

I'm not quite self pub, more of a hybrid thing. I was picked up by Audible for my bobiverse series, and they've definitely done some marketing, but the e-books and paperbacks are self-pub (my agent handles them, but it's still Amazon/Createspace). I've sold well over a half-million units of the trilogy, but I'm still virtually unknown, at least compared to trad pub authors with the same sales level.

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I've never heard of such hybrid things, or of agents dealing in self-pub. Is that a growing thing?

themindstream said:

I've never heard of such hybrid things, or of agents dealing in self-pub. Is that a growing thing?

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I think it will be.

In my case, this is what happened: My agent shopped my first book around, and got squat from the big 5. However, he did get an offer from Audible. We held off on that for a while, because these days the big 5 will not sign a deal without audio (I found that out more recently with Singularity Trap, actually). Anyway, eventually we gave up on getting a print publisher, signed with audible, and put the book up on my agent's Agent Supported Publishing. http://ethanellenberg.com/agent-sponsored-publishing/

I remember at the time, Ethan saying to me that if we can sell a few thousand units, we could consider it a success, and meanwhile we'd work on the next book. Then Legion took off on Audible, everyone was very surprised, and Audible ponied up a contract for books 2 & 3.

The surprise was how much of a difference it made to the royalty bottom line. I guess if you sat down and did the math, it shouldn't have been, but I get the impression no one had done that. Not only are my per-unit royalties significantly better, but Amazon and Audible pay quickly and without holdbacks. See http://ethanellenberg.com/all-about-royalties/ for some info on that.

At this point, Ethan is starting to talk (informally) with his other clients about alternative business plans. Especially if you already have name recognition, going hybrid can be a profitable option.

I think what may happen if this catches on more, is that trad publishers will shift to a more service-oriented model and less of a distributer model. And there are things that publishers take care of that we are having to do ourselves (and by 'ourselves' I mean mostly Ethan). For instance, I just put out a signed, limited-edition hardcover version of the Bobiverse trilogy. That did not go smoothly. Still having issues, really, with sales outside North America. Foreign rights have to be negotiated individually, movie options have to be negotiated (and take forever. Geological processes are faster). OTOH, you're in much better control of things.

I guess, like most things, it's all trade-offs, and you're limited by the options actually within your grasp. We've discussed putting one or more of my future books through a big 5 just to get the exposure, with the understanding that it would probably be a huge financial hit.

Ethan sounds like a smart guy. "Do everything yourself or pay people up front for it" is definitely one of the more intimidating things about self-pub. I have enough art skill to maybe put together a decent cover graphic and that's it.

I expect I'll be starting to make decisions about what I want to do with my WIP novel sometime next year. We'll see!