What follows is a highly simplified explanation, meant to introduce a complex subject.
Traditional Publishing: Contracting with a publishing company so that they will take a book manuscript(s) from an author or their agent, assign their people to work with the author to make the book the best it can be for the market, pay the author an advance fee for the rights to sell the product in the marketplace, and pay a future royalty to the author after (and only after) the advances are repaid via sales of books.
Independent Publishing typically consists of an author and their book files, some form of printing those books, and making them available to mass markets, usually online. Independent (Indie) Publishing has snowballed in the past five years, due, in large part, to the wide acceptance of Print On Demand (POD) sources like Amazon’s KDP. In an article on Publisher’s Weekly, “According to Bookstats, which collects online sales data in real time from Amazon, Apple, and Barnes & Noble across the print book, e-book, and digital audiobook formats, self-published authors captured 51% of overall e-book unit sales last year and more than 34% of e-book retail revenue, compared to 31% in 2021. Those numbers translate into e-book sales of $874 million in 2022 for self-published authors.”
This is not to say that the business of Indie Publishing is simply a matter of sending a file to Amazon, having them publish the book then orders roll in, and the author collects royalty checks every month - far from it. There is much to learn and do well if the author s to have a successful book launch and life-cycle.
The heavy lifting falls into the category of marketing. What was once the largest benefit of traditional publishing, now falls to the author to perform - and to fund—typically today in both traditional and indie publishing. Marketing can be an expensive project. The good news is that today’s Social Media platforms have become a viable way for authors to “get the word out” and to build their own followings.
If you haven’t already tried it, maybe your next book, or e-book is waiting for you on Amazon, or Barnes and Noble online, or other online sources. You might just find your new favorite author there, ready to tell you their stories.
