The Big 5 Publishers in New York never expected a time when they would be questioned on royalties, the value they add to an author, and whether bookstores are the best way to spend marketing dollars given the historical non-commercial ‘returns’ policy, which hits authors hard when 12 months later they discover that sales to bookstores weren’t actually sales after all.
Up until 2012, readers tended to discover their next book by visiting bricks-and-mortar bookstores, but with the demise globally of big chain stores like Borders in the USA, Hughes & Hughes in Ireland, Angus & Robertson in Australia, and profit slumps for must UK book retailers, this is no longer the case. Now only 17% of books are discovered by readers in bookstores. Word-of-mouth, online retailers and searches, and book communities like Goodreads are the primary source for discovery.
Some publishers still prefer to believe nothing much has changed – they’re still in charge of what readers read - but those who have accepted and are embracing the new way, have realized that self-publishing resolves a time-consuming and rather hit-and-miss aspect of their new author program ie the query process. This can be abandoned in favor of monitoring eBook bestseller and latest releases lists. The work has been done for them – the former query letter is now the online book description and author bio; the first three chapters request is now ‘search inside’, assessing commerciality is now the book’s ranking and reviews. But while many of those on these lists have no desire to surrender control, creative and royalties to a publisher, there are many who are happy to do so for valid reasons, eg Amanda Hocking earned millions as a self-published author, but she became overwhelmed with the demands on her time.
More than 391,000 books were self-published in 2012, an increase of 59% since 2011 and a 422% increase since 2007 (75,000 books). 2008 was a milestone year when, for the first time in history more books were self-published than published traditionally, and just a year later, 76% of all books published were from independent (self-published) authors. More and more of those diehard authors, and formerly traditionally published authors are forging these numbers in one direction.
Some might argue that it has been the take-up of self-publishing by the big-name authors and celebrities that has given it credibility, but the reverse is true. Authors and readers gave self-publishing credibility, with primary thanks to the introduction of online book retailers, like Amazon and eBooks. Suddenly, books that had been rejected endlessly in one sphere were accepted when the middleman (the publisher and determiner of who shall read what) was removed from the equation. While for decades publishers were considered the experts on what will be a bestseller and what is commercially unviable, recent history has shown that their guess is as good as anyone’s.
10 Reasons to Self-Publish
1. TIME: your book can be ready for the market in a matter of weeks compared to years with the traditional publishing process. Before you can even approach a publishing house you’ll need an agent, and this query process alone can take months or years then publishers can take a further 18 months to two years before your book makes it onto bookshelves.
2. OPPORTUNITIES NOT MISSED: If you’ve written something that is currently popular, it will still be popular in a matter of weeks (the time it takes to self-publish), but may not be so in a couple of years when it would reach physical bookshelves via a publisher. This could explain why so many authors fail to earn out their advances—their book may have been popular when they wrote it, but due to the time delays, readers have moved on to something else.
3. CONTROL: you make all the decisions regarding the content and design of your book. When an author signs with a publisher, the publisher is in control, and is free to make whatever changes they like. This may result in elements of the story being changed in a way that is not desirable to the author, and in extreme circumstances, a publisher might make decisions that cause controversy and distress for an author for example, the cover of the US version of Justine Larbalestier’s, Liar featured a white girl while the story was about a black girl.