What finally sold you on either self or trade publishing?

I never saw it as an either/or situation and have done both. It depends on what is an option for or will work best for a particular manuscript.

"Hybrid" is vanity. Don't do that. Those places can't do anything for you that you can't do for yourself.

Self publishing is a lot more work, but there are fewer barriers to entry. In part because of that, it's more difficult to gain visibility in the self-pub space.

Trade (not "traditional" - self-publishing is traditional as well ) has some big barriers to entry, but all you do is write the book. You're also going to make more money, at least at first. And if you want to see your book in a bookstore, you pretty much need a trade publisher.

Some genres do really well in the self-publishing space. Additionally, there's a better market for novellas and shorts there (AFAIK, and once again that's genre-dependent). If you're prolific - 4-6 books a year, or more - you'll improve your odds at making a good living self-publishing, but there are plenty of writers with longer release schedules who do quite well.

There's also the option of doing both. There are a number of folks here on AW who've done that.

I actually don't think you need to worry about this now. Finish the book - whatever route you choose, you want the book to be completely polished before you put it out there. Once that's done, the best avenue for your project may become more obvious.

A couple of points to ponder:

1. You'll have to do some promotion, whether you self-publish or are picked up by a trade publisher. That's just the way it is these days.

2. Honestly, you don't lose "creative control" (whatever that is) when working with a trade publisher--instead, you gain editors who want to help you make your work as good as possible. They'll make suggestions because that's what they're good at, but how (or if) you take those suggestions is still ultimately your choice. Being edited was the best part of my trade deals (well, that and bookstore distribution and getting journal reviews.)

I started in trade years ago. You had to go trade or sell books out the back of your car. Back then self-publishing was a HARD road, ebooks were around but not popular and there was no KDP. You had to be in bookstores if you wanted any type of readership so trade publishing was the way to go.

Now I am indie and if I started out today I'd definitely go indie right off. I love being on my own and having control over my own career. It was scary to switch to self-publishing at first but I'd learned a lot about it before I did it so I was prepared.

I remember each year I had more and more trade published friends moving to self-publishing and I finally let go of the fear and did it. I'd gone through years of publishers going out of business and having to hunt for a new publisher. I was sick of giving others control because I kept getting left out in the lurch so finally I self-published and don't regret it at all. It brought back the joy in writing. I'd lost it with publishers because I wasn't free to write what I wanted and I didn't like how minority authors are put in a box automatically. Pubs want to tell you to what to write or they act like if you are a minority with POC characters no one will want the book, etc. Got tired of the racism and politics. I just wanted to be free and as I said, be in control.

Now I write what I want, when I want and don't worry about anything else. I'm very happy with the choice.

In the end, it's going to have to be your decision but whatever you choose, research.

Oh, and uh, you will have to promote no matter what you do. Publishers are not going to do the heavy lifting of promotion unless they believe your book is going to be big and they give you a push. Big names get the big advertising budgets. Midlist and newbies, not so much. So don't bank on a publisher promoting past the minimum. Some don't do anything at all.

It's a huge misconception that you don't have to market with a publisher. This is another reason I am glad to be on my own because if I am going to spend time and money marketing I might as well keep most of the profits too.

Now, not saying a pub doesn't have value if that's what you want. Just saying don't go into trade publishing simply because you don't like marketing because you're gonna have to do it regardless.

I was always happy to go either route. Trade=more visibility. Self=more control.

I tried to get an agent for about 18 months, failed, then self published and I'm happy. I can't possibly write more than one novel per year though, but I'm OK with that even if means I'm never building at a rate that 'they say' I need to. I like that self publishing has so few rules--that fits 'me' well enough.

Note: I suspect if I had not tried to get an agent I would not have polished the thing nearly as hard. So, I suspect those months substantially contributed to the final product.

Marissa D said:

2. Honestly, you don't lose "creative control" (whatever that is) when working with a trade publisher--instead, you gain editors who want to help you make your work as good as possible. They'll make suggestions because that's what they're good at, but how (or if) you take those suggestions is still ultimately your choice. Being edited was the best part of my trade deals (well, that and bookstore distribution and getting journal reviews.)

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So much this. I'm SO tired of seeing this parroted everywhere. I recently saw someone turn down a Big Five offer because they didn't realise the imprint they'd pitched to at a conference was a prestigious one (they had no idea it was part of the same publisher.) They said the same thing: 'I like to have control of my book.'

What I've gained from signing with my publisher is editing above and beyond anything I could have hoped for - but I'm free to ignore suggestions I don't agree with. (My current editor is kicking my arse, but I'm SO grateful for it.) I've gained amazing cover designers who have created things far better than I could ever have wished for. And I've gained the backing of an entire financial and legal department who do all the hard stuff for me - I just have to sign the documents. I have my books on sites like NetGalley.

And all of it has been without a charge for me.

(I should add that I'm considering self-publishing in the future. I'm just a little tired of the "screw the gatekeepers!" mentality that causes people to self-publish before their books are ready to go ...)

Sonya Heaney said:

(I should add that I'm considering self-publishing in the future. I'm just a little tired of the "screw the gatekeepers!" mentality that causes people to self-publish before their books are ready to go ...)

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You and Marissa do make an excellent point though - the whole “losing creative control” is a terrible canard. (I’ve always wanted to say something’s a terrible canard. Thank you, AW.) Apart from the fact that you do retain final say in trade publishing (even if final say means finally saying. “No, I’m sorry” and parting company) how much control do you actually have if you’re doing all that work on your own, without the resources of a good publisher backing you up? Unless - big unless - you are just as skilled at the publishing side as they are, and you have the time, talent and resources to do it really, really well.

Some people do have all that, and they can quite rightly claim to be keeping control of their work. But it’s an active keeping of control, not a passive one. It’s very hard work, and time consuming and I would imagine really satisfying. But not a good idea with a first book, unless you’ve already got quite a background in all the areas you’ll need.

My publisher doesn't expect me to do any promotion. Selling books is their job, and we both know their activities (primarily invisible to both me and readers, and most importantly getting my book into shops) will result in 1000s more sales than I could ever achieve through promotion. As it happens I have done a giveaway off my own back and they have offered me freebies to give away with it. That is all I'm going to do; my time is much better spent writing the next book for them to sell.

The misconception that publishers no longer do any marketing/promotion comes from:
a) confusing promotion with marketing. Publishers do marketing. Authors do promotion. Marketing is what gets the sales.
b) stories of bad publishers who indeed don't do proper marketing, leaving their authors to gain paltry sales with promotion. Amateur small presses are often guilty of this.
c) people parroting what they hear from evangelical self-publishers or vanity publishers, who try to convince authors that they are no better off with a good publisher than on their own.

OP, to answer your question, the likelihood of 1000s more sales than I could achieve on my own is why I pursued trade publication. I haven't lost any creative control and all edits have been my own. My editor suggests what she thinks will improve the book and I either keep things as they are or make changes how I see fit.

I'm not published yet, but I am 100% sure I'm going self-publishing. This is because I'm writing a 14-book MG series and a 4 or 6 book series as well. (I like long series). Anyways, I know you write stand-alones, so you could pretty much go either way. I would do more research into both way, though, if I were you. Good luck!

Earthling said:

My publisher doesn't expect me to do any promotion. Selling books is their job, and we both know their activities (primarily invisible to both me and readers, and most importantly getting my book into shops) will result in 1000s more sales than I could ever achieve through promotion.

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This. I think it can depend on the size of the imprint and how much reach their marketing has, though.

Earthling said:

The misconception that publishers no longer do any marketing/promotion comes from:
a) confusing promotion with marketing. Publishers do marketing. Authors do promotion. Marketing is what gets the sales.

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It's also largely invisible to the author, since it tends to take place in the sales channel, not on the retail floor.

Earthling said:

b) stories of bad publishers who indeed don't do proper marketing, leaving their authors to gain paltry sales with promotion. Amateur small presses are often guilty of this.

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Also keep in mind it can vary from book to book - a pub that does a fabulous job with one book might completely mess up with another. Horror stories abound (*cough*), but that's not a ding on the whole industry, or even necessarily the whole imprint.

Earthling said:

c) people parroting what they hear from evangelical self-publishers or vanity publishers, who try to convince authors that they are no better off with a good publisher than on their own.

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Yeah, this. There are absolutely advantages to trade publishing, just as there are advantages to self publishing, and anybody who tries to badmouth one or the other probably has an agenda.

Sonya Heaney said:

(I should add that I'm considering self-publishing in the future. I'm just a little tired of the "screw the gatekeepers!" mentality that causes people to self-publish before their books are ready to go ...)

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That's where I will absolutely agree with you. I'm not against gate-keeping per se. In fact, I think Amazon needs to do a lot more of it, not for content, but for basic quality. There are so many people who upload books that are full of basic grammar errors, misspelled words, unintelligible content, badly formatted garbage that just digging through the trash on KDP to find anything worth reading is a hassle. I think there needs to be some basic level of competency before you're allowed to upload to Amazon. They pretend to care so much about reader experience, but the only way to get a bad book pulled off of the site is to get a lot of people to complain, instead of doing the quality control up front and making sure those bad books never hit the platform in the first place. But that takes work and Jeff Bezos doesn't want to make that commitment.

Patty said:

(In case my comment that "self=more control" contributed to a collective sense that I, personally, felt trade takes an author's control away, I'd like to expand my experience:

To me, 'more control' doesn't mean anything about the edits etc, especially not once an author is working with an agent and publisher. I imagine that is variable between cases. To me, the control relates to other parts of the entire process.

Everything from the cover art to the word count to the release date to whether I make oodles of material within the novel free on my website is entirely up to me.)

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I understood what you were saying, Patty. I'm hoping to self-publish a book next year (if I can get my @#$%! together), and it does feel nice to know I can share cover art or excerpts and distribute it however/whenever I want to without having to worry about arrangements I've made with someone else.

I don't, however, expect to make any money on the project, because I'll be paying at the very least an artist and an interior designer. (Fence-sitting about an editor because I'm a little arrogant, but I should probably find one.) I'm doing it because I want to make the story widely available and easy for people to read, and self-publishing via Amazon/Apple/Kobo/etc. seems like it'll give me more reach than, say, Patreon.

Considering the time it requires to complete a novel, typical publisher advance for even relatively commercial genre fiction seems far too low unless your book is truly special and generates exceptional interest.

If you enjoy the entrepreneurial and marketing side of it, self-publishing seems like it can be a lot of fun. If your book is decent enough, over time it should not be hard to generate more revenue than the paltry sums typically offered by traditional publishers. So far, I've never had any of my work published yet, but I have held down a day job in independent film distribution and marketing for years, so hopefully there will be some parallels.

PostHuman said:

Considering the time it requires to complete a novel, typical publisher advance for even relatively commercial genre fiction seems far too low unless your book is truly special and generates exceptional interest.

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Do the math sometime on how many copies you have to sell of a self-published book before you clear a "typical publisher advance." Advances are a big, big advantage of trade publishing, especially since you're not carrying the costs of editing/layout/cover art.

PostHuman said:

If your book is decent enough, over time it should not be hard to generate more revenue than the paltry sums typically offered by traditional publishers.

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Some self-published genres do really, really well, and you can indeed make good money. But if you're a once-a-year publisher, odds are it'll be a long time before you hit the "paltry sum" a trade pub will give you for an advance. (I write SF - not a genre that does spectacularly well in self-pub, although there are some outliers. This article suggests the average trade publisher advance in 2005 for a debut SF novel was $7000. FWIW I got more than that in 2014.)

And keep in mind that an advance is an advance on royalties, which are all about volume, and in general you're going to see a much better volume with a trade publisher.

lizmonster said:

Yeah, this. There are absolutely advantages to trade publishing, just as there are advantages to self publishing, and anybody who tries to badmouth one or the other probably has an agenda.

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Sadly, it’s terribly easy to pick up the people who won’t do well out of self-publishing by looking at the reasons they give for doing it. It’s more often “Gatekeepers are bad” or, “nobody publishes new writers” or “total creative control” or “I’m pretty confident this book is perfect” and so rarely “this is a niche book, but it’s important because Reasons” or “I’ve been involved in publishing for years and have knowledge and contacts that I can pull in” or “I have a proven record at mastering skills and an independent mindset” or “I’d just like to try, because it might be really fun, and I’m willing to gamble this book on learning.”

The bad reasons are much easier for the unwary to latch onto than are the good reasons.

mccardey said:

Sadly, it’s terribly easy to pick up the people who won’t do well out of self-publishing by looking at the reasons they give for doing it. It’s more often “Gatekeepers are bad” or, “nobody publishes new writers” or “total creative control” or “I’m pretty confident this book is perfect” and so rarely “this is a niche book, but it’s important because Reasons” or “I’ve been involved in publishing for years and have knowledge and contacts that I can pull in” or “I have a proven record at mastering skills and an independent mindset” or “I’d just like to try, because it might be really fun, and I’m willing to gamble this book on learning.”

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Or "my series didn't sell well and I have two books left so what else can I do."