Having now made it through my own self-publishing saga as well as having multiple books published the traditional way, I figured I would gather my thoughts on the two approaches. I'm probably not going to say anything that others haven't said, but maybe it'll be said differently enough to make it interesting!
The TL;DR version: Trad publishing is a great gig, IF (big if) you can get it, as long as you're cool with someone else running the show. Self-publishing, YOU run the show – but that word "RUN" is what you'll be doing, as in "run yourself ragged".
Traditional Publishing
Of the two approaches, there is no doubt that traditional publishing is the easiest. In simplest terms, I send my publisher a finished manuscript, the publisher sends me money (for the turn-in fee), sometime later they send me the proofs and I check them, and then they publish the book. I don't have to do anything else.
Of course, one obvious limitation of this approach is that you, the author, can't actually just choose to go this route. Traditional publishers have their own standards and interests, and you have to convince them that your stuff exceeds these standards and will meet their interests. If they've never heard of you before, that's gonna be a hard sell, usually. So in a sense, the "choice" between traditional and self-publication is a misnomer; sure, to an extent I, or any other established traditional author, can make that choice, by deciding to not offer something to my regular publisher and just self-pubbing, but the vast majority of would-be authors can't reasonably just look at it as a simple choice.
This is one of the primary reasons for the growth of self-publishing; not only is traditional publishing an uncertain option, it's also one that – in general – takes a long time to reach, even if it turns out that you can and do get the attention and acceptance of a traditional publishing house.
On the other hand, a proper traditional publishing house (for fiction – rules are somewhat different in nonfiction areas, and my comments are of course most germane to genre fiction specifically) offers you a lot of advantages.
First and foremost is the advance; a real traditional publisher recognizes that once they're taking your manuscript, they are purchasing "first rights" (NOTE: More on "rights" in general at the end of this article). You can never get First Rights back, so traditional publishers do, and should, provide you with an appropriate amount of money that both reflects those rights, and the fact that, in the cold hard light of day, they're betting specifically on YOU as a potential moneymaker.
This is THEIR bet; YOU are offering your manuscript and rights, so they do not, and should never, be asking you for money for any part of the publishing process. "Yog's Law: Money flows FROM the Publisher, TO the Author, and NEVER the other way around." Reread that carefully: if your publisher EVER asks you for money (rather than simply suggesting, say, that going to Convention X would be a good idea), they're not acting as a traditional publisher.
Second, and no less important, is the work that a trad house does. They provide *everything*. I didn't have to look for a cover artist, or negotiate their fees; I didn't have to sort through people who might be decent editors, proofreaders, typesetters, etc. That's all done by the publisher.
Third are the CONTACTS the publisher provides. One of the true challenges for a self-publishing author is publicity and distribution; how do you get your stuff in front of people who care? Even in today's market, a traditional publisher's reach is vastly greater than most people appreciate. Even the simple minimum they will do for most first-time authors – a press release in a couple of the trade journals, a presentation to book buyers, etc. – is publicity that you as an author simply could not buy, and if you COULD would be something that would cost you ten thousand dollars or more. Your book ends up in many, if not most, bookstores across the country, and is seen by hundreds of key people in the trade. Never, EVER underestimate this, as I will show you later.
The major limitation of the traditional publishing route (aside from the "can I convince them to take me at all?" issue) is control. Control comes in a lot of forms; the ones most likely to be noticeable to an author are editorial and presentation control
While an author can – and most of us do, at one point or another – say "no" to the publisher's editorial requests, it is generally an unwise thing to do most of the time, for two reasons, one good, one possibly not. The good reason is… well, you NEED editors to find the stuff you aren't doing as well as you should. They provide editors, and a GOOD editor is worth their weight in pure platinum. If they make suggestions to you, most of the time it's because they think you aren't telling your story as well as you think, at least in some area. Speaking as someone with (as of May 5th) 11 trad published books under his belt, all of those books have benefited more or less greatly from editorial advice, and if I had rejected that advice, the books would not have been as good as they are.
The possibly-ungood reason you don't want to refuse too many editorial requests from a publisher is that the publisher may well decide at that point that they don't want to publish your book. This isn't a decision they'll generally make lightly, I should note – reversing such a decision is almost as much a PITA for them as it is for you – but they can and will do it on occasion. As an author, this does mean ceding a certain amount of control over your manuscript, and you may not entirely agree with it at times; there are a few such incidents in just about any published author's history.
Presentation includes the selection of cover artist and the subject of the cover painting, the precise layout of the cover, formats of the book for release (ebook only, trade paper, etc.), internal layout and typesetting, and so on. You have, as an author, NO say in these whatsoever with most traditional publishers. With luck, you MAY be allowed to have contact with the cover artist, but you have no authority over the artist or their choices; at best, you are able to call attention to events or elements of the novel that you think are particularly cover-worthy, but you have no actual control over it. The basic rule of thumb is that the TEXT of the book belongs to you, but everything else outside of that text is the publisher's,
This means that the look and feel of the final product is, in fact, pretty much completely out of your hands. You don't have to do hardly any work, but you'll also have hardly any control over it once the work starts; you have to just wait and hope the result lives up to your expectations.
Length may also be a constraint. A typical genre publisher won't usually take a manuscript from a new author that's less than 80,000 words, or more than about 120,000 words, unless it REALLY grabs their interest. The numbers are somewhat lower for YA novels. This means that "novels" that meet the technical definition of 40,000 words, up to around 70,000 words, and those well over 120,000 words, are going to be very hard to sell. That can mean that you'll be asked to cut your manuscript down, or puff it up, neither of which is necessarily much fun for the author.
There is also the issue of time. From the time that your final manuscript is accepted by the publisher to the time the book hits the shelves is an average of about one year. For some people, that seems like a devil of a long time, and – in some ways – it is, while in some ways, it isn't. You'll see why as we go to the next section…
Self-Publishing
Here, control reigns supreme. You, the author, control every aspect of your book, big, small, fancy, simple, electronic, physical – it's all up to you, and these days there are a number of convenient, reputable firms and resources to provide you with all the tools you need to get the job done, whatever way you want to do it.
This control of course extends to the choice to publish at all. Unlike traditional publishing houses, there's no one and nothing to stop you from publishing anything you want, in any way you want. You think your book's ready for prime-time? Then go for it, because there's no one to tell you different!
Of course, that's also one of self-publishing's greatest pitfalls. Anyone can put up their magnum opus even if it's never been edited, or even proofread for spelling errors, in its existence. (No, running it through MS Word's Spellcheck is NOT a substitute for real proofreading). Unfortunately, most people cannot effectively edit and proof their own work – I am tempted to say ALL, but I am an optimist and willing to assume there are a few paragons out there who can manage to approach their own work with a completely detached frame of mind and releasing all of their own assumptions.
Unfortunately, this brings us immediately to one of self-publishing's greatest limitations: money. Trad publishing pays you up front; self-publishing, done anything like right, COSTS you money – and comes with absolutely NO guarantee that you will ever see any of that money come back. It's VERY important, when starting on a self-publishing venture, to remember that those shining examples of success in self-publishing that everyone mentions are the same as the Stephen Kings and J.K. Rowlings of the world; far, far outliers whose performance should never be used as an example for what you should expect. Even in traditional publishing, there's a lot of risk; the old joke is "How do you make a small fortune in publishing? Start with a large fortune."
If you want to self-publish WELL – make a professional-looking product with reasonably professional production values – you'll need at least an editor, a proofreader, a cover artist, and someone who can do both interior and exterior layout of the book.
If you happen to be someone with experience in these fields, great – at least some of it you can do yourself, for free (aside from your TIME, which, for most of us, is far from "free". More on that later.)
But most of us authors know how to write stories, and not so much the other stuff; even if we know how to edit, we can't edit our OWN stuff. The principle there is very much the same as for law: "The lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client". Similarly, the person who edits themselves is not likely to be doing themselves a favor.
A professional editor will not be cheap. A 100,000 word novel will cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars to edit properly, depending on the editor, the complexity of the edit, and how much the editor's willing to cut you a break. To a considerable extent, you'll get what you pay for. There ARE inexpensive, yet very good, editors out there, but they're very rare, highly sought after, and unless you already know them and are on their lists, you'll have a hard time finding them or getting on their schedules – and even the "inexpensive" ones will be in the hundreds of dollars.
The same is true of professional copyeditors/proofreaders. Note that "copyediting" is NOT the same as substantiative editing. The latter refers to examinations of the book as a work – seeing how well the story flows, noticing errors of logic or presentation that damage the story, and advising you on ways to fix apparent flaws in the story. The former has to do with the mechanics of writing – checking grammar, references, and so on.
In general, you want the different types of editing done by different people also, although some people can manage to do both.
Cover art is one of the most difficult areas. It is of course possible, these days, to create your own cover from available stock images using Photoshop; of course, it's also quite true that most authors aren't much in the art department, and the covers that they, or their best friend Ray who's really good at making Tumblr memes, are pretty obviously not professional-grade.
Sometimes it is possible to find pro-grade work for amateur prices; DeviantArt and similar sites are areas where aspiring artists show off what they can do and often are willing to do commissions for reasonable, or even ridiculously low, prices. However, it's still something of a crapshoot, and professionally I am averse to underpaying people for professional work. I wouldn't want someone asking ME to do my writing for a tenth of what it's worth, so I probably shouldn't be going around asking artists to give me a $500 painting for $50, either.
An experienced cover artist in your chosen field – one with a solid reputation and knowledge of the kind of imagery used – is not going to be cheap. For one thing, making a cover painting is, in and of itself, a skill that takes considerable time to develop. You can't just approach it like a regular painting, because you know that (A) it's possible that only PART of your painting will make it onto the cover, and (B) the dimensions and ratios of the cover may be different from book to book, so different parts of your painting may be used by different people, or even by the same person for different editions of the same book; the latter is the case for my own Polychrome, as the "real estate" available for the large-size hardcover is significantly different both in size and aspect ratio from that available on the trade paperback format.
Add to this specific skill the general skill and talent you, the author, will want, and it's obvious that such people will be applying an awful lot of experience and expertise to giving you the painting you ask for. For well-known artists, that's going to be very expensive. Such people will be asking – and getting – four figures for their work. Note that in those cases, you're getting the right to use the image, but not the actual painting, which the artist retains. If you wanted the actual original as well, that's gonna cost you.
Once the editing, proofing, and artwork are complete, you still need to do layout and publishing prep – formatting the book for actual publication. Once more, this is something that a few authors may be good at, but most people aren't – and it's one of those deceptively simple tasks that can turn out to be frustratingly impossible to do well if you don't understand it. That will, once more, be another few hundred dollars to get done RIGHT.
Then – and only then – are you pretty much ready to publish your book.
In theory, self-publishing is much faster, especially if you're not planning on doing a physical release. In practice? Well, I'd originally planned on releasing Polychrome in November, or seven months after the Kickstarter funded. In reality, it released in April 2015, almost precisely one year after the Kickstarter concluded.
It so happens that this is just about exactly how long it usually takes from the time you hand in a manuscript to the publisher, and the time that the book is officially released.
It is true that some of this delay could be traced to the time it took my cover to be completed… but in a more realistic view of the world, almost any part of the process can be stalled by weeks to months, and – in all likelihood – at least one such part will be. In my case it was the cover painting, but in another it might be the editing and proofing, or layout.
Now, if you choose to forego some of those steps, you can of course speed up the process. If I'd been willing to just stuff Polychrome's Word file into KDP for conversion, I could've published the book in a couple of weeks – grab a public-domain image related to Oz and Polychrome and do a quick edit into a cover pic, as I did for the Kickstarter video, do my best at layout and a quick proofing pass, and then upload it.
But then it would not be either visually, or textually, nearly the book it has become. Quality costs money, and – in the long run – I think it will eventually win out, on average, over expedience. I do know that in part I was driven by a determination to make sure that the resulting book was fully equal, both in appearance and in care of production, to those produced by Baen; I wanted to be able to place Polychrome on the same shelf and never have any question that it belonged there. But at the same time, it's purely pride of workmanship. If your novel was worth so many hours of your time and thought to produce, it's worth a few more hours, and a few more dollars, to make sure it's presented right.
Again, this all takes TIME. And time – for most of us – is a very precious commodity. The traditional publishing approach takes very little of my time away from the main job of WRITING. I spend a little time consulting with cover artists; a day or three going over galleys; a little time writing blurbs. But other than that, I just write stuff and send it in. The work of self-publishing takes TIME in one way or another, or – if you have it – you can sometimes substitute money for your time by paying someone else to do the work. But it will ALWAYS demand more time from you than the traditional method, and for people like me – with a full time job and a family – time's a rare and precious commodity. This is true for a lot of other authors as well.
There is of course one other aspect of self-publication I haven't touched on: promotion and marketing. As I said, even the most basic effort by a regular traditional publisher is the equivalent of extremely expensive marketing, and Polychrome is already proving that. I had neither time, nor money, nor – to be honest – the knowledge to properly promote Polychrome. It has sold, roughly, 1/30th as many copies in first week release as any of my regular releases. I am a not completely unknown author, with double-digits of books released, yet this brand-new novel is selling more than an order of magnitude fewer copies than ANY of my other books on release.
NEVER underestimate the power of even the most indifferent traditional publisher's publicity.
If you're going down the self-publishing route, you will need to learn a lot of promotion skills… or just rely on sheer luck, which you'll need a lot of. Exactly what tactics would be best for marketing and promo… those I can't discuss, because I really don't know.
One more aspect of control deserves a short but specifically separate discussion: RIGHTS.
In traditional publishing, you sign a publishing contract with the publisher. The primary rights involved are, of course, First Publication rights, but most publishing houses will be trying to include as many other rights as they can. Some of those are sensible – for instance, the right to put out both print AND e-book format versions of your book. Other than that, read your contract carefully and decide what rights you're willing to concede to them, and in exchange for what; for instance, a contract may say that they will take "dramatic" rights (i.e., TV and Movie rights) but that if those rights result in anything you will get half.
Let me repeat this: READ YOUR CONTRACT. If you find you don't understand it, find someone, preferably a lawyer, who DOES understand the contract, and make sure that what you are getting is what you THINK you are getting, and that you're not giving away anything you're not comfortable with.
If you're a new author, you may think you can't argue any terms of the contract. Well… it's true that arguing TOO much could easily sour the deal and make the publisher pack up and leave. But the fact that you really really really WANT to get published should NOT be a lever to force you to accept a bad bargain. Don't sell yourself short.
Now, with that said, the fact is that most of those other rights aren't likely to be WORTH much; most of us will never get movie deals, have video games made of our stuff, or whatever. Just make sure there's a provision for you to get money out of the bargain in case any of them amount to something!
You might think that self-publishing evades all these issues, and to a certain extent, under the right conditions, you'd be correct. If you go to the right vendors, and choose the right options, all the rights remain vested in you; you'll just sit back and let the money roll in trickle slowly.
HOWEVER, there are a lot – and I mean a lot – of outfits and divisions of other companies which may claim to be assisting self-publishers, and which will try to obtain more or less control over your work. Be very cautious doing business with any outside groups that you don't know – and research any of them, even those you think you know. Even large established traditional publishers have unfortunately attempted to take advantage of the self-publishing wave by a number of rather underhanded means; one of the best sites to check if you are ever unsure is Preditors and Editors (http://pred-ed.com/). And always remember the basic business dictum: "if it sounds too good to be true… it probably isn't true."
With all of this, I think the differences between both approaches, and the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches, should be pretty clear. I'm glad, now, to have done both, and I may do one or two more self-publishing projects… but I remain incredibly happy that most of my books are traditionally published, and will save me that long and difficult slog to the finish line!
As you said nothing new, but all the same well said, concise and relevant.