A Look at Traditional Publishing (Part 1 of 3)
In my years of working with writers, much has changed. There used to be only two book publishing methods, both of which I utilized many decades ago. One was to work through a traditional publisher. The other was to do the prep work of the traditional publisher and work with a printer yourself, ultimately to be sent boxes of printed books that you would then sell on consignment to bookstores or out of the trunk of your car.
Today, several added options are open, including both of the above. In the following five essays, I will examine the four primary ways authors get published today: traditional publishing, self-publishing or indie publishing, hybrid publishing, and vanity presses.
I’m not a purist. Each has advantages and disadvantages, depending on what the writer wants or their intended audience. I have my choices I have used for various projects, but we are not all made with the same situations or ambitions. If I have a novel that I think has a chance to be a bestseller, then a traditional route would be the best for me. If I had a book on a course I might teach at a college, the audience would be more limited; one of the other routes would be the best. One publishing-route size does not fit all authors or all books. In this essay, we will examine traditional publishing with the others to follow in later posts.
Traditional publishing involves working with an established publishing company (such as Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Kensington, Down & Out) that vets, selects, acquires, edits, manufactures, distributes, and markets an author’s work. In this path, the publisher fronts all costs, including advances to the author and expenses associated with production and marketing. That is good. The downside is that traditional publishers reasonably take more of the book’s profits in return for their risk, but believe me, the risk is significant.
In traditional publishing, publishers—but more likely editors and, in many cases, acquisition editors—consider submissions primarily via literary agents, though some will take submissions directly from authors. (Note: if you go the traditional route, you must secure a literary agent to do it right. The following section will address this.) Traditional publishers are in the business of publishing books, so, with a business frame of mind, they will focus exclusively on manuscripts that they think can secure commercial success and possibly critical success, depending upon the motivation of the traditional publisher. Traditional publishers are gamblers, to some degree, but they are not charitable organizations, nor do they not know exactly what they are doing.
Generally (because different publishers have different processes), once a traditional publisher acquires a manuscript, an editor will be assigned if one is not already in place. The process will start with getting the manuscript to a crafted and proofed level that satisfies the publisher. A publishing date will be set. The manuscript will be copyedited, maybe by a team of editors with different specialties (depending upon the size of the publisher). Formatting and layout will follow. The cover design will run concurrently. Publicity and marketing plans will begin to be formulated and, when applicable, implemented. When all the elements are ready to go in time for publication, the book will go to printing (various stages of approval in this, as well), and then the public will see it on the publication date. The public rarely knows all the work and collaborators who have worked on a book. All they see is the finished product that the publisher hopes will be one of the titles that break out and make a profit to cover all of the other books that did not sell-through their advance and resulted in an overall loss. Before and following the publication of the book, the publisher will amortize their investment by attempting to exploit all the rights they have acquired, which could include digital, translation, audio, and/or media rights, in addition to their initial print rights acquisitions.
There are pros and cons to this model and, with a choice now of five different ways to publish a book (traditional publishing, self-publishing or indie publishing, hybrid publishing, vanity presses, and the old-fashioned method of printing everything yourself by working with a printer), a writer needs to examine what their ultimate career goals are and how much work they wish to do (or have time to do) in the vital areas of post-writing editing, book design, format, and layout, distribution, and marketing. To succeed in any publishing model, all these steps must be managed expeditiously, intricately, and exhaustively by a person with specific knowledge and experience in these areas.
Traditional publishing comes with prestige and professional support, but is it worth the trade-offs? In our next post, we’ll examine the key advantages of working with a traditional publisher and what that can mean for your writing career.
