Quote:
Originally Posted by Rizla
Sure, I can see it may make sense for a trad-pub author to go self-pub because they already have a known brand and no longer need a BPH to give them visibility. But for other authors, I can see why they would choose to go trad-pub given the chance. and that's what I'm seeing in the thread I cited. Self-pubs that people highlighted as good had mostly gone trad-pub.
|
Definitely. You see discussions all the time on the writer groups about "giving up this series to trad" with "x books planned" while working on Y series to do self-pubbed. It's a business plan for a lot of writers. One writer actually claimed to be taking what he said was a loss in monthly income to go trad with his currently successful series to get the exposure/name behind it. He pretty much said that unless it went much better than expected with the trad route, he'd start planning another series for self-pub. Doing such helps him AND helps the publisher if he can keep two quality series going.
But not everyone tries that route either. It's a LOT of work to submit query letters, get an agent, work all the various pieces. I had an agent before I went self-pubbed and there are a lot of business tasks associated with the process. You get asked for synopsis for the series, synopsis for each book planned in the series, titles, chapters and of course, manuscripts for one or two books. You still have to do all the rest of the regular marketing like short stories and contest entries to get your name out there and show you are trying to create a brand. You probably should also be writing at least one or two series while this is going on. You don't want to try to HAVE A life at that point, because there isn't time.
