Michaelbrent Collings is an internationally bestselling author, a produced screenwriter, and one of the top indie horror writers in the United States. He also may or may not have a cool robot arm. More about him on his WEBSITE
Epublishing vs. Traditional Publishing – The Final,
Definitive, Uber-Duber, Last, Final, Totally Last Word on the
Subject. For Now.
There are a lot of articles across the
interweb (and if it's on your computer, it must be true!) about which
is better – traditional publishing or epublishing.
Oddly,
they seem to come down across party lines: people who are
traditionally published, or who work for large publishing houses,
tend to say that trad-pub is the way to go; people who have their
work primarily on Kindles and Nooks and iPads and Smashwords scream
about the future of epub and the death of print.
I know.
Weird, right?
I wanted to set the record straight.
First
of all: I am primarily epub myself. I have a few olde-tyme print
books, but I'm one of Amazon's Most Popular Horror Writers, a #1
Kindle bestseller, and a repeat bestseller on almost every one of
Amazon's major fiction genre lists (sci-fi, horror, fantasy, etc.). I
write everything from kids' books about magic to grown up books about
evil things that go bump in the night. My most recent novel,
Strangers, has spent
months on Amazon's various horror bestseller lists, and I anticipate
my next book will do even better.
I make a living writing,
and a huge chunk of it is digital.
I also used to be a
lawyer. And in good lawyerly fashion, I will render my verdict. Which
is better, epub or trad-pub?
It depends.
Awesome
lawyer answer, huh?
But it's the truth. Because the reality
is that each offers goods and bads. So let's talk about each:
EPUB:
The Good here is that you have complete control. You get to
do whatever you want, whenever you want.
The Bad here is
largely the same. You have to do everything. Which is why there are a
lot of drecky, poorly-edited books with ugly covers on epub.
I
spend a lot of time and effort working on my books. Not just the
drafts, but the edits, the layout, the covers... everything. I taught
myself image manipulation (meaning, Photoshop-type stuff) so that I
could produce good covers. I taught myself conversion principles so
that I could make sure I did a good job getting my book to your
Kindle without sacrificing layout. A lot of writers aren't willing to
do this; they slap a product together... and it shows. I would invite
you to check out the differences between my covers (just go to
michaelbrentcollings.com) and the ones at my friend Nathan Shumate's
lousybookcovers.com. Sadly, you often can judge a book by its cover.
Now, if you're looking for "fast" then epub is the
way to go – you can write fast, put a cover together fast, and get
it to market fast. You might also hear crickets chirping exceedingly
quickly as there is a concerted rush of absolutely no one to buy your
book. And that's not because the audience is bad. It's because (more
often than not) your book is. The cover is lousy, the layout is
unprofessional, the story is been-there done-that.
Listen up:
I firmly believe that everyone – everyone – has great stories in
them. Stories worth telling. Stories people will gladly buy. But I
also firmly believe that everyone has to practice to get to the point
where they know how to tell those stories properly.
Think of
a doctor: how many of you would go to a doctor who, when asked about
his qualifications, shrugged and said, "Well, I
went to a doctor once. And he sucked so I was, like, 'I can do that!'
And then I, like, became a doctor. And stuff. That'll be a hundred
dollars."?
No, you want a doctor who a) studied, b)
graduated top of his/her class, c) practiced at an amazing
hospital/medical practice, and d) preferably has been doing this for
at least a decade. And that last is important, because practice and
experience matter. No matter how smart the doc is, until he's been
around the block a few times, he's not going to be all that good a
doctor.
Writing is the same way. Most writers just suck until
they've treated their writing with the seriousness of a PhD program,
spent years honing their skills, years more practicing before trusted
audiences, and then maybe they'll be pro-level.
And epub will
not shortcut any of that process.
Epub is faster. Faster to
market. But if you're marketing crap, or if you're marketing your
unprepared skills, it just means a faster failure, too.
TRAD-PUB:
The Good here is that you have help. The Bad here is that you
have to give up control. You will have editors, you will have layout
artists and cover artists. You will have other people giving input.*
You will then have to actually listen to that input. And you will
have to wait on it. Epub is a matter of writing the book and then
uploading it to the outlet(s) of your choice. Boom. With trad-pub
you:
1) Write the book.
2) Send query letters to
agents.
3) Wait for two to twelve months.
4) Have an agent
request your book (this is best-case scenario; most often you get
rejected and have to start again from scratch).
5) Send in your
book.
6) Wait another two to twelve months.
7) The agent
accepts your book (again, best-case scenario here).
8) The agent
sends your book around to publishers.
9) Someone accepts it after
two to twelve months (do I even have to say the best-case thing
again?).
10) The book gets plugged into their production scenario
for sometime in the next year (very fast) to three years (not unheard
of).
Total wait time from end of book to book on shelves: one
to five YEARS.
Yikes. That's time
you're not getting paid, by the way. You'll get an advance (see my
footnote below – if not getting an advance, why are you doing
this?), but no money being actively earned in that time. There's also
the chance that during production the editor who loved your book and
championed it will get fired or quit and your book will become an
"orphan" with no one to champion it and will never see the
light of day (this happens), or the company itself will go bust or
get bought and the same thing will occur (this happens, too).
The
upside is that trad-pub books have a tremendous amount of access to
the market: they get into bookstores, libraries, WalMarts, Costcos,
etc. They are in airports and liquor stores. They get foreign market
rights and sell movie rights more often. They are more likely to end
up making the extreme big bucks than epub. That's changing as epub
becomes more and more of a force to be reckoned with, but as of now
if you want to get to the very top of the heap, you have to work with
trad-pub at some point.
Also, because you do have a lot of
talent at the top, your books are more likely to look and be
presented better. I like my books. A lot. Could they look better?
Sure. Would I love to see them at the checkout aisle at my local
supermarket? Heck, yeah!
But, for me, I would prefer to get
my books to market, make my fans happy, and put money in my pocket.
And that brings me to...
The
choice
Be aware: you will be
choosing. If you epub, that book is dead to the trad-pub world. No
big traditional publisher wants to take Amazon's sloppy seconds,
unless that ebook has sold in excess of something like 100,000 copies
at around five bucks a copy. Then they'll talk. (But if that happens,
why do you really need them?) So if you're hoping to parley your
ebook success into a publishing contract with Penguin for that
book... yeah, good luck with that. In fact, for a lot of agents and
publishers, the fact that you're epublished at all will be a black
mark against you. Because how dare you!
Silly? Maybe. But
true.
It's something to be aware of. I think that's going to
keep changing more and more, but then if you do make a successful
career for yourself you run into the problem of outgrowing agents and
publishers: I regularly have offers from publishers I have to turn
down because they can't afford me, and most agents won't touch me
because they won't be able to meet my expectations for the next phase
of my career.
Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we
practice to epub. I think Shakespeare said that.
Conclusion
Epub and trad-pub are both awesome. I have books – real and
electronic – all over my house. I love them. Some are traditionally
published, some are indies. There is a place for both. You can choose
either.
Just know what you're getting into. And have the
sense and courtesy to do a professional job no matter where you go.
* And if you don't, RUN. This is the type of thing you
should be getting at a traditional press. A lot of newer authors I
know are signing deals that basically make them do everything, and
they end up signing away a percentage of their profits in return for
someone basically submitting their files to CreateSpace. Why do that?
If some "publisher" is just a glorified self-publisher and
you're going to do all the work yourself, you might as well cut them
out of the loop and keep all of whatever profits there are! Read your
contract, find out what they're going to do, and hold their feet to
the fire! (Back
to text)