Unspoken Truths of Traditional Publishing- What They Don't Want You To Know

Devlin Blake Author

Traditional publishing secrets revealed. Uncover hidden truths, pros, and cons. Gain insights for a successful writing career. Take control!

Transcript:

Traditional publishing has often been called the gold standard of book publishing, but that’s actually not true. Maybe it was once, but in the modern age, that’s just a lot of hype.

Full disclosure, I don’t publish traditionally, and the truth is, except for magazines, which I have been published in, I’ve never even tried. That’s because we are living in a brave new world of publishing, and I want to take full advantage of that.

Because of my familiarity with self/also known as Indie publishing, I actually get many people coming to me AFTER they published traditionally (or at least tried to) and are now ready to embrace indie publishing too.

Here is what traditional publishing DOESN’T tell you based on my clients experiences. (and yes, a few were with a Big 5.)

Hi novelteers, I’m Devlin Blake, Novel Writing & self publishing Expert, Coach, published author, and former ghostwriter of over 200 books. If you’re writing a book, be sure to check out my Novel Writer’s Club, featuring self directed courses, weekly crits, ask me anything, group coaching and more. You can find out more about it at the link below.

So let’s look at the first thing traditional publishing houses don’t tell you. You’ll likely need to sell a million books. This is what a publishing house expects as an average to make even a little bit of profit.

And while this sounds great, who doesn’t want to sell a million books, it also means if your book doesn’t look like it will sell that many, then you’ll either be rejected outright or have to make so many changes it no longer resembles your original book.

I have had clients come to me after getting a traditional publishing deal because now they want to write the book they REALLY wanted to write and didn’t get to.

And that’s not the only reason your book could get rejected. You might be turned down for reasons that have nothing to do with how good your book is.

Among the reasons I’ve heard for otherwise decent books getting rejected include; they already said yes to another book too much like yours to say yes to yours, you don’t have a large enough following on social, (yeah, they really do look at that.) And your age. It’s true. If you’re too young, (under thirty) or too old (over 65) they usually don’t want your book.

Another issue is if you’re book is in a dead genre, then the traditional publishing houses won’t want it. Dead genres are those that are so overdone that they aren’t expected to sell.

Now, I did want to say that there’s no such thing as a ‘dead’ genre in the indie world. Every genre can sell and usually does. However in the traditional publishing world, genres go in and out of favor.

Right now, vampire romance, magical boarding schools, a lot of urban fantasy, westerns, zombie, dystopia and westerns are out of favor. Despite the fact that they still sell great in the indie market, if your book is one of these genres traditional publishing houses won’t be interested.

Another thing traditional publishing houses won’t tell you is that you’re going to be in largely charge of your own marketing. Traditional publishers don’t put many marketing dollars towards an unknown when they can put those dollars into someone with a following or a reputation. So if you’re counting on a traditional publishing house to do your heavy lifting when it comes to marketing, they aren’t going to do that until you get more established; and that’s on you.

E.L. James, who wrote fan fiction that later turned into 50 shades of gray already had a huge following on her fan fiction site. Harry Potter was already an extremely popular book series before it got turned into a movie. And Suzanne Collins, who wrote the hunger games, already had the connections she needed in Hollywood to become a breakout success.

Even in the modern age, many publisher’s ideas of marketing are book tours and media appearances. And while those sound fun and stroke your ego, they don’t sell books, and that’s what you want to do.

Even if you get picked up traditionally, you still aren’t likely to make much money. This is because on average, an author only sees about 10% of their book royalties, sure if you’re Stephen King or someone, you’ll likely get more, but not that much more.

You can actually make a lot more money publishing indie, between 30-70% in most cases.

And, then, finally, there’s the issue of rights. Some publishing houses tie up your rights and get you agree to rights you didn’t know you agreed to.

For example, despite the fact that I know what you did last summer made over 125 million with the first movie and had 3 sequels and a series, Lois Duncan got paid a flat rate at the start, without any residuals after. They also changed her story from a psychological cat and mouse game to a slasher flick that she hated.

Another example, is my client. Over 10 years ago, she wrote a 3 book fantasy series. At least, that was the plan. She wrote the one book and published it traditionally, signed the contract and started working on her second book for the series.

But after only 6 months, her book was pulled from bookstores by the publishing house because it wasn’t performing up to expectations.

This killed the rest of her series. After that, she wanted to publish inside, but the publishing house still had the rights to her series, even the unwritten books and that world in general.

Though they had no plans to do anything with it, she wasn’t allowed to do anything with it either, and she had to start a new series in a different world from scratch, while she waited for the rights to revert back to her, in about 15 more years.

So these are some of the things that you probably don’t know about traditional publishing houses.

I go into indie publishing a lot more in my Novel Writer’s Club. In fact, I have a whole course on it. One of many that’s going to make your book the best it can be.

You can find out more about it at the link below.

Until next time, this is Devlin Blake saying Write On.

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Categories: : ADHD/ Autistic writing advice