Anyone who regularly reviews book proposals can easily see the influence of self-publishing on authors’ thinking, especially in the following areas.
Calendar
“I’d like this book out for Christmas.” To which I reply, “What year?” This is the most stark reminder of the differences in the models. The length of time to market for a book is measured in weeks or months for the author-controlled process and in years for the traditional publishing model.
I often see proposals where the author is ready to start promoting, scheduled to speak at conferences in six months, and has their platform aimed for the big launch. I’ll reply with a suggestion to self-publish, since any traditional publisher wouldn’t be able to have it on the market for another 15-18 months at best. There’s no point in even trying to make this work through an agent or traditional publisher.
Marketing
What an author sees as a slow process, traditional publishers define as intentionality. The goal for them is to bring all the sales and marketing pieces together in a cohesive, effective plan. Even for author-controlled publishing, where a platform might be small or nonexistent, some sort of marketing effort is essential. I wrote about this issue earlier this year.
An author might publish one or two books in a year or in their lifetime. A traditional publisher might publish from one to five books per week. The sheer complexity of wrangling all those books is quite a different process than the author thinks.
I doubt many self-published authors pay much attention to the competition releasing on the day they are publishing their book. Traditional publishers consider not only their own books, but also those of other publishers when determining the best release dates. Sometimes they compete with themselves, having multiple books launching on the same day.
Editorial
Length, quality, and structure are issues that have different definitions, depending on how a book is published.
There are acceptable word counts for traditional publishers for each category of book, making it commercially viable. Author-published works rarely have that in mind, especially if a book is published digital-only.
Even if an author pays a professional editor to edit their work before self-publishing, that work often pales in comparison to the extensive editing process that a traditional publisher undertakes for any book displaying their logo. A traditional publisher might invest $15,000 or more in editorial time into a single book.
Some authors follow the editorial “rules” commonly used by the industry, but a traditional publisher is passionate about following a style guide for everything from punctuation to footnotes.
Legal Issues
The professional self-publisher will pay attention to issues of plagiarism, libel, fair use, and attributing quotes. The casual self-published author is generally not as concerned with these.
For traditional publishers, these issues are of great concern and rarely, if ever, ignored.
Printing
Most self-published books are printed on demand when sold. Traditional publishers print large quantities and warehouse them, either themselves or at a distributor working with hundreds of publishers.
Making a financial commitment to print thousands of books before they have been sold is a significant issue that self-published authors rarely confront.
Several other key differences distinguish author-paid and publisher-paid models of publishing. Any author switching from one model to another requires a complete change of vocabulary and perspective.
