Being a NYT bestseller isn't all it's cracked up to be

In her latest blog posting, author Lynn Viehl graciously shares some more details about how much money she earns from one of her novels. This type of information is typically unavailable, and I applaud Lynn for sharing her personal data with us. This is a follow-up to her first reality-check posting. Please, go read both of these and then come back - they are well worth your time. Don't worry, I'll wait for you.

Here are some things that I took away from the both postings:

With traditional publishing houses, it's a constant waiting game. You wait to hear if you can submit your manuscript, then you wait to hear if it's accepted. But at that point, the waiting has only begun - you wait anxiously for publication, and once published, you wait for sales reports and royalty payments.

Based on the dates that Lynn gives, the author is paid out about 6 months after the data is actually accumulated. On Lynn's statement, we can see that the accounting period ended May 31, but the statement wasn't generated until August 18. And then, to top things off, the publisher sat on the statement until November, when they finally sent it to Lynn.

In her first posting, she states that the book was published in July of 2008, but didn't receive her first royalty statement until April of 2009! That's an incredibly long time to be kept in the dark, especially in this day and age of computerized inventories and tracking.

Lynn received no marketing support from the publisher. "I was never informed of what the publisher was going to do for it (as a high midlist author I probably don’t rate a marketing campaign yet.)" The entire task of marketing was left to her, and she had to promote her book on her own dime.

From the statements, we can see that Lynn earns very little money for her success. After selling 80K copies of her book, she's still trying to pay off her initial advance of 50K. This is because the royalty percentage she receives is small. While Lynn grossed 50K (she still has to pay taxes on that money), her publisher grossed $450K - nine times as much.

Conclusion

In this day and age in which authors have the ability to self-publish and reach a global audience, I fail to see the compelling argument for publishing through a traditional publisher. If you're going to put all the time and effort into creating and marketing a novel, shouldn't you reap a large portion of the financial rewards?

By going the traditional route, authors give over creative control and the lion-share of the profits to the publisher, in return for zero marketing support and extremely slow service. That just doesn't sound like a good deal to me.

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Dawn of the Indie Writer

The dawn of the indie writer is nearly upon us. We're fast approaching the point in time when the stigma will be erased, and self-publishing will become not just an option but the norm for authors. As brick-and-mortar stores give way to the online marketplace, independent authors will finally be able to compete fairly with "traditionally published" authors. Instead of spending time struggling to get their books on the shelves, indie writers can concentrate on marketing their product on the shelf space of the Internet, side-by-side with traditionally-published titles.

Detractors have always said that self-publishing is for writers that aren't good enough to be published traditionally. But these days, what that really means is that a writer's work doesn't fit neatly into some corporate pigeonhole. As indie writers fill the voids and satisfy the audiences left behind by traditional publishers, self-publishing is becoming accepted as a legitimate alternative.

There's been a recent trend among traditional publishing houses of jettisoning their "midlist" authors - authors that are moderately successful but are not bestsellers. By eliminating these authors, the publishing house is taking choices away from the reader, narrowing the marketplace. They are doing this so that they can spend their diminishing marketing dollars on "sure-thing" titles, but ultimately I think they are speeding up their own demise.

Abandoned midlist authors will have no choice but to self-publish, and they will take their solid work, their years of experience, and their established audiences with them. These writers will lend more credibility to self-publishing, raise the quality bar, and help remove the stigma.

If the Internet has shown us anything, it's that there's an audience for just about anything. That said, those audiences still expect a certain level of quality. Books of poor quality will be quickly panned by readers. Solid writing and good storytelling will be recognized, and will find an audience. The difference is that these titles will no longer need some subjective seal of approval from a traditional publisher to reach those audiences.

For the first time in history, it will be the marketplace that determines the successes, not some suit in a large publishing house concerned primarily with the bottom line. Having more titles in the marketplace empowers readers. As indie publishing becomes more prevalent, and brick and mortar gives way to cyberspace, it will be the readers that get to choose which titles rise to the top and which sink to the bottom. On the Internet, the lines between self-published and traditionally-published authors will be blurred, and the reader will choose the writer not based on the publisher on the spine, but by the content inside the book.

The fuse is ready to be lit. Indie writing is set to explode into the public eye as the next major phase of publishing. All it will take is a single spark - some shining example of self-publishing that will capture a large enough audience to really showcase all that the self-publishing paradigm has to offer. The day that Oprah picks a self-published title for her book club. The day that the New York Times bestseller list contains a self-published title - these days are not too far off.

Will you be ready for it? Will you provide the spark?

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