Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Being traditionally-published still imbues status to an author.
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To some people.
To others the vast majority of tradpub authors (excluding the big name Patterson/King/ etc) are (naive?) victims of predatory contracts and corporate hucksterism.
How a book gets to market says nothing about its inherent quality.
At best, being tradpubbed *today*means you are willing to sell ~100 years of copyright control for a payday loan and low royalties for a century.
Publishing has changed drastically in the last decade but most tradpub authors haven't internalized the sea change. Just look to the recent handwringing from the US's self-styled authors guild for their belated and timid indictment of what tradpub does to authors these days. The added value offered by the few good tradpubs is rarely enough to offset the contracts.
Established tradpub authors these days fall into three classes:
1-those that saw the change coming early enough to get most or all their backlist reverted and have gone mostly if not totally indie
2-those who didn't get the rights reverted and can only indiepub new works and only if their non-compete clauses don't prevent it.
3-those big enough not to care about leaving significant money on the table.
The other group of established authors (and there are a whole honking lot of them) are those that purposefully avoid tradpub.
As time goes on the next generation of big name authors will come from that last group.