Breaking Out of the Box: Options for More Control in Publishing Today
I have bad news and good news.
Bad news: as of the 2023 stats, four million books are published each year, or about 11,000 every day.
Good news: the options for HOW you publish—how you physically produce a finished book—have also grown. A publishing avenue exists for almost any writer who is ready to release a work into the world. Imagine—beyond traditional print books there are now serialized books (here on Substack!), audio or video books, zines, blogs, interactive, even games.
We’re trained to the mindset of traditional only. Or Big 5 traditional only. Of ceding control of the production of our book in exchange for vast outreach and career enhancement. Writers worry: if my book is not traditionally published, does it still count? Will I get to do another one? Will readers find me?
I can say, having been published both traditionally and indie, that glory did not equal where I published, only how. What mattered, to me, to sales, was how the book looked, felt, and read. Did it still contain my original passion and vision?
I felt this was the first step in a long journey towards understanding the publishing world: what I lost when I gave up control of my book to a publisher. I want to share some of what I learned along the way, since many of you are looking outside the box for your future books too.
Let’s explore your options today. How do each of them weigh in cost of effort, money, and time? I like to divide this into two decisions: production and outreach.
Production is the physical process of making a book. It determines how the book is received and how effectively it can be marketed to the readers that will resonate with what you write. Outreach is the marketing itself—how you and the publisher find those readers and spread the word.
I believe most of us want our stories to affect readers. To keep them turning pages. To even change their lives with the meaning of our narrative. To make them regret finishing, because the story took them great places. To tell their friends how the book made a difference in how they saw the world.
Many writers feel book production is a mysterious process. Only publishers know about it well enough to guide a book. My aim here is to illuminate some of the behind-the-scenes mystery of how a book is produced, learned from decades in the publishing industry as editor and author. I’m also not here to dis any publishing avenue: each has a legitimate purpose. But each also promotes their way as the best, as all businesses do.
So it’s helpful to understand the pros and cons of each book production option, what you can control and decide during the physical making of a book and what you need help for.
First, a word to those authors who choose their publishing platform for career enhancement. I did that in the beginning. But as many published writers know well, a big-name publisher doesn’t automatically equal big sales. You can swim (and get the next book offer!) or you can sink (nada) based on a small window of time your book needs to attract initial buyers. We writers believe that once we land a big publisher, they’ll do the work for us. But stats say that only 10-20 percent of books earn out their advances. If you aren’t gearing up to self-promote—and publishers across the board nowadays expect authors to self-promote, whether small indie publishers or those 5 big ones—your hoped-for career may not blossom.
Publishing is a business, no matter how we writers romanticize it into creative expression and others “getting” the soul of our work. Books are basically a sellable product; and they compete with podcasts, audio, video, news, Netflix, you name it for readers’ attention. We all LOVE books, though, which is why we persist. But it comes down to choice. And how much work we want to do for our book.
That’s what I’ve been learning since my first book was published in 1988. And what I’ve been learning even more since my current novel went into its pre-publication journey in April.
OK, so that’s the bad news. Now we’ll get to the good stuff: all the options you have, once the mystery is dissolved.
What are your biggest questions right now about publishing? What still seems unknown or mysterious to you?
I like to start with passion. Because good book production is all about passion. Booksellers and book publishers start with passion for a great story, right? And readers want that passion to be communicated via the the printed book or ebook or audiobook—how it looks and feels, how the pages flow, if the cover pulls you into the story.
You control the passion in your work during the manuscript stage. When you begin the publishing journey, you often turn that control over to others. Manuscript goes to an agent, who changes it. Then to an editing team who make more changes. Then to the production team who decide paper quality, interior layout, cover, type style. Then to the marketing team who choose how much they’ll help you promote it.
This group vision guides the physical production of your book.
Not a bad decision, if you’re new to publishing. Authors learn a lot from working with a good professional team, especially if they are collaborative. Many are not, though. As a debut author back in the 80s, I didn’t care—I knew nothing about what makes a good book, other than what to write. I was happy to let them decide everything. And they did. The passion and purpose I’d felt at the start, the hope I held, morphed into someone else’s vision. Again, not always a bad thing, if my book got into readers’ hands.
This varies by author, of course, but that was my experience. Titles got changed. The cover was chosen by others. Interior layout, paper quality, how crowded the text felt on each page, the end pages where the publisher might advertise other books were completely out of my control.
About half the time, I didn’t actually like the way my book felt, read, and looked when it finally appeared in print. I can say this now, looking back on a long history of 14 books published. At the same time as I realize my privilege at even having one book published, I feel regret over what was lost in giving over my vision to others. A little disappointed by the ways I “appeared” in print.
If the books sold well, and overall they did, if they got into readers’ hands, that is what mattered most.
But as I learned more about the publishing industry, my goals changed. I still wanted readers, but I realized that much of the outreach—how readers were located and told about my book—was up to me now anyway. The production was something I wanted more control over. It was a risk, though. Could I design the production journey myself? I decided to test it out. For the thirteenth book, Your Book Starts Here, I went completely indie. I created my own imprint and hired an editor, a typesetter, a cover designer, and a proofreader.
I became my own contractor of the production, or building, of my book. The risk was not losing control; it was keeping too much, stupidly. I chose well, though. My team gave me good advice, I made good decisions. That book is still earning royalties 12 years later. Except for one typo I found a few years ago, it pleases me every time I open it or tell someone about it. I have no regrets and no hint of shame about how it looks, feels, reads, or helps writers.
Have you ever considered producing your own book? Why or why not?
A third option exists for writers today: the hybrid publisher. Hybrids are collaborative teams, within a collective, that allow writers more control. The writer funds the production and gets the professional help of a real publishing team, without having to become the contractor. Most hybrids also “vet” the manuscripts, so there’s a certain standard held to. Vanity press has changed its name to indie, but it still attracts “basement” authors, self-producing a book without skill, a book not yet ready for other eyes. I buy a few each year, just to keep current. My 2023 choices (mostly on weird gardening topics) are so poorly typeset, only sometimes containing useful information, they rarely feel worth the ten bucks I pay. But I know how hungry writers are to see their work in print, and I wish them well.
I also wish they’d at least hire a copyeditor.
If you have the bucks and you want to keep more control, though, hybrids are definitely worth looking into. When I read a recent Substack by Cheryl Strayed interviewing a She Writes Press author, I felt even more certain that hybrids are here to stay and becoming more respected in the industry. In fact, this recent article in Publisher’s Weekly and this post by Barbara Linn Probst on Jane Friedman’s well-respected blog tell me hybrid publishing is an accepted way to get a book into readers’ hands.
Why does production matter so much? If I am proud of my printed book, if I love the cover and the layout of the ebook, if I am totally engaged as I listen to the audiobook narrator’s voice, there’s a much greater likelihood that I will eagerly find readers who resonate with my story. I won’t hold back promoting it because my passion for it is still intact. I recognize the book, it’s mine. It’s something I love.
Successful outreach, to me, leans heavily on the author’s love for their work. Today most publishers, trad or indie or hybrid, expect the writer to self-promote. You may get assigned a publicist by your trad publisher, but how much will they do for you? Many writers hire their own, to supplement. I hired three: a publicist that specialized in book blogger tours, another for podcast tours, and a coach for overall marketing advice. Some hybrids offer supplemental marketing help; She Writes Press has a strong marketing arm, according to three of my students who’ve published with them.
I’ll be exploring outreach in another newsletter. It’s a big topic and I learned so much.
Being happy with your published book matters. It’s not enough to just have your name in print. You deserve to love the end product. And your choices now allow this, more than ever. With all those millions of books competing for your reader’s attention, you want to be so proud of your book that it shines though every time you talk about it, no matter what production path you take to publishing.
I feel pleasure and satisfaction when I see my past published books on my bookshelves. But with some, I feel regret—the choices I made, the passion I lost in the process, still affects how I feel about the book now. Working with an agent or big name publisher versus no agent and a small indie didn’t make a difference. Some were bestsellers, some were quiet; some got many readers, some only a few. All of them taught me, so now the process is less of a mystery.
There’s so many ways to play this game. It comes down to what you most want.
When a writer asks for advice on how to publish, I ask them this, the same question I asked myself with each new book. You’ll work for your book today, no matter the publishing avenue you choose.
Stay tuned for a post in the next few weeks about outreach, the other side of the publishing equation. I started out a newbie and now I have a LOT to share.
Your Weekly Writing Exercise
Read the PW and Probst articles on hybrid publishing. See how the ideas sit with you. Are the risks smaller than what you’d need for a success with a traditional publisher?
Use the questions at the end of Barbara Linn Probst’s article to free write about what you ready want for your book and what work you’re prepared to do towards that end.