The Publishing LandscapeToday: Types of Publishers
Over the last decade, the publishing landscape has changed dramatically. On a grand scale, there are many, many new publishing companies, and tremendous consolidation of the oldest companies. Conglomerates, many from other countries, have bought the established New York publishers and made them part of a vast media empire.
On a much smaller scale, it is now possible for a single author to write her own book, have it printed, and market it herself by assembling a talented team of people (many of whom may be former employees of the largest New York publishers). Especially if her book will augment her own consulting or coaching business, this approach may provide the most immediate - and the most profitable - results.
Let's define the publishing options available to an author today.
Commercial Publishers are companies which purchase the right (usually the exclusive right) to publish the author's work and then pay the author a royalty (a percentage of the sales - usually 7%-15%) for that right. Commercial publishers invest by producing the inventory of product (the book or other products), so they must choose wisely which books/authors will pay off for them in a reasonable amount of time. In other words, they choose to work with only a small percentage of the projects they review.
Commercial publishers are often divided into two categories:
Mainstream publishers are the largest, traditionally headquartered on the East Coast, mainly in New York City (although there are now big publishers in the Midwest and the West Coast as well), and sign most of the big-name authors and best-selling books. They generally produce several hundred new books a year.
Independent publishers are smaller, niche publishers that may specialize in a certain type of book (children's books, business books, cookbooks) and will generally produce anywhere from 10- to- 100 new books a year. There are several thousand independents, and many new ones spring up every year.
A subset of independent publishers is the micro publisher, which might be a division of a nonprofit or other type of company that produces 1- to- 5 books per year. These companies may have started as self-publishers but now publish books written by authors in a very narrow niche.
Self- publishers, although not a new phenomenon, have recently become more legitimate in the publishing world. In the self- publishing model, the author keeps the rights to her book, but pays all the costs for producing, printing and marketing the book and other ancillary products.
Self-publishing is a better option than it once was, because technological advances with desktop publishing have made it easier for an author to write, design and create her own book. In addition, it is now more cost-effective to print in smaller quantities, meaning that the initial investment in printing and inventory is now more feasible for the average person.
To self-publish, an author must have enough capital to create an inventory of the book and have enough time to write, produce, market and ship the product. She, in essence, starts a new business around her book.
One of the important choices to be made by a self-publisher is to select a printer. Today, a number of printers specialize in books, particularly in printing small quantities. These are known as POD (or print -on- demand) publishers. They are primarily printers, but may add editorial or marketing services in order to be considered publishers.
Most authors think of the difficulty of self-publishing as the logistics of knowing how to get a book designed and typeset, and how much to spend to get a book printed. But this is the easy part. What is much more difficult is getting your book recognized by book distributors, then marketed appropriately, and onto bookstore shelves.
The other drawback of self-publishing is that the printer will print whatever you send. . If you send a book that hasn't been edited or proofread, or that isn't commercially viable (meaning there really isn't an audience), the printer will do just as beautiful a job as if the book were an award-winner. In other words, no one will stop you from spending money on a book that isn't ready for publication.
Subsidy publishers are also not new to the publishing world, but have never been considered to be legitimate publishers. In the subsidy (also called vanity) model, the author pays a company to print and do some marketing of her book. Subsidy publishers accept all (or most) manuscripts, so if the author has enough money, she can get her book published. The author then keeps all the money from any sales of the book.
A slight variation is called the equity publisher, which may be more selective than the subsidy publisher, and may offer more editorial and marketing services. The author still pays all the costs of producing the book, and also keeps 100% of the sales.
Subsidy publishers often market to aspiring authors, and sometimes it is flattering to an author, that a publisher has approached her. Then she finds out that there is a cost involved, and wonders if the publisher is legitimate. Because more and more people have heard of vanity presses, they often offer superficial editorial and quality guidelines to make it appear that they do reject manuscripts.
Subsidy publishers are not a good deal for the author, because they are generally expensive and don't provide any editorial or marketing expertise or services. To add insult to injury, some subsidy publishers “buy” the rights to the work and only pay the author a royalty, fooling the author into thinking, this is a regular publisher. Thousands of people who have been taken in by subsidy publishers have dusty, out-of-date books sitting in their garages to show for their naiveté.
Subsidy publishers handle the logistics of getting a book produced and printed, but at much higher cost than for an author to do it herself. And although many subsidy publishers promise to market books, often very little marketing actually happens.
Good books can be, and have been, produced by mainstream publishers, independent publishers and subsidy publishers. It is important for the author to know the differences among the various types of publishers and to base her choice on what is best for her and her book.
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