The whole Amazon/Macmillian/Apple kerfuffle, and the less-than-savoury antics of many publishers regarding author royalties for ebooks has given me some pause for thought in my general business plan. I'd always assumed - like most writers out there, I suspect - that traditional publishing was really the only bar in town, and that self-publishing was for people whose writing / book was so bad, they couldn't get the 'real' kind, or books that you didn't really expect anyone to actually buy.

Which is really a load of prejudicial bullsmatter.  I've discovered through various blogs that a number of authors are quite happily publishing their own stories via kindle and various self-publishing avenues and making a tidy profit. Not megabucks, but certainly more than you'd expect. I recently discovered Smashwords, an online business that allows you to publish to all manner of e-book formats, and list yourself in Amazon, B&N, and other major online book stores, giving you a generous 85% of the royalty.  Hopefully when Apple gets iBooks up and running, they'll integrate there, as well.

So, if it's now not only possible, but almost easy to publish your own works, what does a traditional publisher give you for that 90% of the list price you're handing over?

Respectability

Like it or not, self-publishing still has a stigma. For anyone in the publishing industry, a self-publishing credit counts as no credit at all, or potentially even negative credit, as they make the same assumption as I did above - that you self published because no 'real' publisher would touch you.

It's a tad arrogant, and a natural extension of protecting their own business model - if they accept self-publishing as legitimate, then they greatly diminish what they have to offer, and successful authors start asking why they need to bother with a publisher at all.

The thing is, though, that regular people don't shop by publisher. They shop by author. If Joe Schmick picks up your book in a bookstore, or look at it online, he's not going to notice, let alone care, that the 'publisher' of your book  has only ever published your books. It's not until he hears the term 'self-published' that it even registers.

So - you get a certain level of respect from being traditionally published, but only within the publishing industry. 

Brick and Mortar stores

This is still somewhere the traditional publishers have a heavy hold. B&M stores stock books by traditional publishers because of the vast network of distributors already set up. While there are single-book distributors for self-publishers and small imprints, a lot of bookstores just don't want to bother setting up another account, or tracking that book. 

There's no guarantee that going with a traditional publisher will actually get your books into stores - the book store still has to be willing to stock it - but it's a hell of a lot easier job for a regular publisher than a self-publisher.

Whether or not you can expect that many sales from a B&M store, with their three-month-sale-and-return, and shelved-out-of-sight-unless-you-pay-extra policies is another issue - meaning this factor is rapidly becoming less important.

Production

When you hand your manuscript over, the publisher handles its production. They find editors, typesetters, illustrators, printers, binders, etc. The author gets very, very little input into the process, but on the other hand, they're not doing (or paying for) the work or tracking down the contractors.

It's not *that* difficult, however, to do it yourself. Publishers almost universally expect you to have had you book professionally edited by the time it reaches their hands. A book that needs substantial editing has a far slimmer chance of acceptance. So, strike editing from that list - you're already doing that. 

Typesetting, if you're selling digitally, is something that can be done over a few hours to a day, depending on the original state of your MS. Illustrators are easily sourced through the internet, and once you strike up a good relationship with a few, future works will run more smoothly. Printing and binding is a matter of choosing your print-on-demand printer, and there are dozens out there.

So while you will have to bankroll the production for a few thousand dollars, there's nothing there you can't do yourself. And you get to retain complete control over your work.

Marketing and promotion

There's the idea that publishers market authors. Which, in some ways, is true - but only for certain authors. In publishing, a hell of a lot of the income comes from a handful of authors, and its those authors that get the marketing budget. Nobodies like you and me get a mention in the bookseller's catalogue (which, incidentally, you can do yourself. It costs about $100.) and maybe a brief spot on the publisher's website or some advance copies to reviewers if you're lucky - and that's it.

The author is expected to do the grunt work of marketing - creating a platform, arranging their book tours (mostly overrated, these days), getting bloggers and reviewers interested in the book. In fact, you're possibly better off without the publisher - you don't have to run your marketing tactics by anyone, if you're self-publishing.

Nurturing

In the glorious olden days, publishers used to 'nurture' authors. They'd take them when they were raw and polish the edges until they had someone who could consistently turn out popular books. But treating the emerging author kindly, they had a loyal supplier of product.

Not so much now. Publishers have moved to the bestseller novel, at the cost of midlist authors. They'll take a newbie in the hope of finding a miracle book in the first two or three publications, but if there's no hit, then the author is quietly dropped amid the nameless, shapeless Midlist of Doom. 

Authors who want nurturing have to learn to do it themselves, now.

Legal protection

Not usually what you see in the list, but this is an important factor. When you sign a contract, the publisher becomes liable for the contents of the book. If your book defames someone, it's the publisher who is sued, not you. (And if you are sued, they'll usually come to your defence. It'd be terribly PR not to, and they like to keep relationships with their author on a positive level. Plus, if they can spin it right, they'll sell enough of your book to more than cover the legal fees).

Without a traditional publisher, you're on your own if you land yourself in legal hot water. Not a likely scenario (depending on what you're writing, of course) but the outcome could be devastating.

Summing up

So, when you sign over your rights to a publisher, you get your book produced for you and sent to brick and mortar stores with very little effort on your part, you get a smattering of promotion, legal indemnification, and the ability to smugly count your "real" publication credits.

In return, they give you 10% of your book's list price, up to a year after the sale of a book. Does that seem like a fair deal?

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