A good article about self-publishing in Jenny Hansen’s Cowbell blog. Here’s an excerpt:
Is Traditional Publishing a Viable Option?
After some consternation at not finding satisfactory “reasons not to self-publish,” it dawned on me that there is a problem with the proposition itself. Having reasons not to self-publish makes it sound as though there is a viable, competing alternative. But in reality, this is a fallacy since the option of traditional publishing is truly available to only a few.
Most writers can choose the traditional method of publishing the same way a freshman in college can choose to become a professional athlete or the CEO of a large company. It’s certainly possible to achieve either goal, but how many freshmen are realistically in control of these outcomes?
The real choice is whether a writer wants to query publishers. A professionally edited and formatted manuscript is only the beginning of the query process. The savvy know it takes a tremendous amount of work and a portion of luck just to get noticed by a publisher. Mark O’Bannon’s The Odds of Getting Published compares getting a publishing contract to winning the lottery.
I keep hearing people who aren’t in book publishing talk about how hard it is to get a publishing contract. It’s true — and it’s not.
There are many times more manuscripts on submission or query than there are slots on the lists of mainstream houses. That sounds pretty hard. BUT most of the authors submitting are not following the rules of the game.
If you want to be published by a mainstream house, and not everyone does, you can greatly increase your chances.
Most importantly: Do your homework. Only submit to agents or publishers who work on your type of book. Start by looking at books that are doing well and that would compete with yours. Look at the front and back matter to see which agents or editors are thanked. Those are the ones you want to send queries.
Look up the submission guidelines of each agent or imprint and FOLLOW THEM. (Yes, really. Follow them to the letter. Change your query, etc to fit each one separately.)
Be brief, but complete. Make it clear who your target reader is, where they can be found in great big groups, and how your book can be presented to them (cost-) effectively. Then briefly make it clear what they’ll take away from your book, and how your book gives it to them. VERY briefly. (As in: you can read it aloud comfortably in 15 to 30 seconds.)
Be professional. This book may be your baby, but it’s time to stuff your emotions in a sack and seal them away. Be objective and businesslike. If you’re very lucky, someone will tell you what’s wrong with your manuscript. (Nothing is perfect, and most new authors’ manuscripts are far from it, no matter how high the praise for them has been.) If you’re very, VERY lucky, someone will tell you how to approach fixing it. Don’t take offense. Take notes instead.
Be respectful of everyone in the process. Even a young whippersnapper of an editor has probably worked on dozens of books, perhaps hundreds, all in your field or ones closely allied to it. They’re not perfect, and some of them aren’t tactful, but they are worth listening to, even if they’re wrong. And they just might see something that you’re too close to the book to see for yourself.
Be persistent. Even the best books may be presented to the right people at the wrong time. You have to query dozens of times before you exhaust the pool of “best candidates” for the agent or imprint to handle your soon-to-be-book’s launch into the wider world.
Oh, and don’t shop a book that doesn’t have a large and identifiable potential audience. Publishers are in the book **business**. If it won’t sell in significant numbers, they can’t afford to publish it. It costs a lot more than most people think to publish a book. And publishers get a much smaller piece of the pie than most realize.
It is hardly surprising that more and more authors are opting to self publish today. Consider the whole time frame that authors of a new work are expected to endure in order for the established industry to process submissions.
Claire King wrote an insightful piece earlier this year that demonstrates how insane the system is.
http://www.claire-king.com/2011/06/29/literary-agent-responses-how-long-is-normal/
Slow, yes. Insane? Not necessarily. The blog link above is about literary fiction. This is rarely a time-sensitive type of material.
It’s also one where it’s quite rare for the new author to do as well as an established publishing company (in terms of number of readers or total profit). And it’s important to look at the total profit, not the profit per copy sold. You can’t expect to sell as many copies as a publishing house unless you’re a world-class sales and marketer.
For another type of book, this wouldn’t be true, but for the literary novel with real potential, it might be better to be in less of a rush.