Traditional Publishing
Let’s start with Traditional Publishing. Historically this is what most people think of when they hear about a book being published. A book is created by the author. Painstakingly revised to get the approval of an agent. The agent has connections to the editors who acquire books for Publishing Houses like Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, Hachette, and HarperCollins. The editors purchase the rights to publish the book from the author. So the author receives an advance in this agreement. The publisher then polishes the book, creates a cover, creates and executes a marketing strategy, takes orders for the book, and distributes it. They want to earn back the advance paid to the author and then some to cover their expenses and make money as a business.

This is a time-consuming process, it can take years to get the book out but at each phase, an expert in book publishing is revising and fine-tuning to make this book the best it can be in terms of return on investment. Is it marketable, is it going to sell.

But those industry experts are gatekeepers. They can only invest in so many books, they can only read and review so many books. So the agents receive A LOT of queries, where authors pitch their book. And the agents then pitch or submit the book to the editors based on what they think will sell.

Everyone along the way who worked on the book gets a cut of the success. So you might think, well that’s less for the author. But remember, they got the advance upfront payment. But the money always flows to the author. After the royalties are divided out the author is still paid.

At no point in this process is the author ever asked for money. Not from a reputable agent. Not from a reputable publisher. The author pays nothing up front, they earn money later.

Self-Publishing
The name is a little self-explanatory, but in this case, the author has their book and they decide they are going to get the book out themselves. No gatekeepers, no long timelines, no upfront investment. So the author in this case finds people that they will pay to help with editing, cover design, formatting, etc. The author puts the money out upfront to create the finished product and the author uploads the book to Amazon (Amazon KDP), Barnes & Noble, (B&N Press), Kobo (Kobo Writing Life), or to aggregators where you upload once and it is distributed everywhere like IngramSpark or Draft2Digital.

The author has to learn all these phrases and businesses, market the book, and pay for ads.

It is a lot of work, and many authors will hire out for publicity or ads if they can afford it. Or they will pay for classes to learn how to grow an email list or just hustle with podcasts and book blog tours.

They’re doing this without institutional support. But a lot of indie authors like to help each other. The ones who have been doing this for a few years turn around to help the person behind them.

All sales and money go to the author. They may have gone into the red when paying upfront for design and marketing services so it may take a little bit to recoup their costs, but they get all the money.

I have tons of videos on all the platforms and basic questions for self-publishing. I have videos about querying which is the first step of the traditional publishing process.

What other questions do you have? If i already have a video, I’ll post that as an answer. Otherwise, I’ll make a new video answering it.

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