Quote:
Originally Posted by ApK
Maybe in the future there will be a way for you to publish your manuscript without an agent or publisher and yet still reach a huge market. Perhaps through some electronic form of book and even an electronic bookstore of some sort.
Oh, wait....
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Lol! Yes, I've thought about it. My conclusions run along the following lines:
(a) Self-pub is a lot of work (I've done it with short fiction collections). It turns out that I love cover design, market placement, and strategic marketing via blog tours. On the flip side, I despise proofreading, formatting, and error-checking. Novels have a lot of the latter.
(b) Trad publishing brings in an additional vetting process. If I can convince an acquisitions editor, a marketing department, and a final decision-maker to hop on board with this project, that's pretty good evidence that I'm not delusional.
(c) Independent and unbiased (but hopefully enthusiastic) editor.
(d) Legitimacy. Self-pub authors can and have produced spectacular books, but in terms of pure statistics a self-published author has a harder time getting bookstore placement, promo opportunities, and general street credit than a trad-pub author who can leverage the reputation of her publisher.
(e) Someone else pays for review copies?
Obviously, most of those arguments only apply to big-name publishers with a solid track record. By the time you get down to the small press, it pretty much turns into a toss-up.