It’s the dream of most writers of being traditionally published, no matter what they write. Of course! You write your book, get accepted by one publisher, receive a pretty hefty advancement in Royalties and feel the “Success” of being a writer. Ahhh, yes, THE Dream.
But this is no fantasy land, and only a VERY hardworking minority ever gets published, and that’s the main problem with Traditional publishing: They have limits.
In our article about Rejection, specially aimed towards traditional publications, we talk a little about that, you should check it out.
Traditional publications have limits in the number of publications they can put out in any given period of time and this creates some problems, such as:
1- Profits vs Costs
They have to make as much money out of each book to be profitable and survive, and here’s why: normally, traditional publishers, have a marketing machine, and lots of room to manoeuvre, but marketing is something unpredictable.
Imagine this: You sign a new author, and you give him/her the 10K advancement. Ok. Now, you have 10k + the printing costs + the marketing costs + distribution costs. Let us say that all of that, reaches 100K. Imagine if you don’t target that book in the right direction, which can happen, or, imagine that the book “doesn’t stick” and you make only half of that?
Ok, we can say that over the years, this amount probably levels up, but here’s the thing: You have just lost half on one book’s deal. Imagine if half of the books you publish don’t break even? Bankruptcy looms, fast. That’s why most publishers risk mostly with writers who already have a big fan-base to start with, either that, or that has a VERY impressive book.
No matter the intentions of the publisher, be it good or bad, vanity or not, the end-game is the same: To make as much money as possible. To be profitable. And that speaks volumes. But before we continue, I want to clear something: I’m not dissing Traditional Publishers, at all, I’m just being objective here.
2- Overload
After they reach their numbers, they cannot receive more books, because they would be risking themselves to be overloaded and be unable to properly focus their marketing efforts. Diversification is something very dangerous.
As it was before stated, traditional publishers tend to focus in promoting only a certain amount of books in a certain period of time in order to reach maximum profit of each book.
The thinking goes like this: “It’s better to have 10 books that sell 100 copies each, than to have 100 books that sell one copy”. This is certainly true, and crucial once you put all the investment they have to put in “acquiring each book”, no matter the quality.
3- Their Reader’s base.
They have to search for specific books, themes because of the type of readers they have acquired over the years, rejecting most books, no matter the quality of them.
If you are a traditional publisher with a reader-base of poetry lovers, you won’t risk publishing fantasy. That goes even deeper. If you have a fan-base of epic-poetry lovers, you won’t risk publishing haiku books.
That’s something that isn’t talked about enough. You see, most publishers have a “theme”, that goes in accordance of the likes of their reader-base, something that they want to please at all costs, every time.
So, what does that mean for you as a writer? It’s simple: If you aren’t writing what their readers want to read, no matter the quality of your writing, they won’t sign with you. More about this on this article.
4- Growth and Standards
The more they grow, the easier it gets for them to overlook quality, due to the cheer amount of content they have to process, and quotas they have to fill.
It’s inevitable. It doesn’t happen to all of them, but to most.
You see, it comes a time, and nobody notices, that profit overtakes all, and Traditional publisher start slacking on the quality of their books. I’ve seen it myself. Big, renowned publishers, putting out books that could have been better edited. It’s sad.
Once again, please don’t get me wrong, I’m not dissing any publisher, at all, but it’s just what I’ve observed over the years, and I say it here that I can be completely wrong, and we can debate this in the comments.
I’m not saying that these same publishers don’t put out, or stop putting out GREAT books from great writers, both new and established writers, no. I’m saying that the consistency of their good quality decreases with their size. That’s it.
On the next article, we will talk about “Why self-publishing platforms like Draft2Digital are the future of publishing”. Follow us, stay tuned, and leave your unabashed thoughts on the comments XD. See you on the next article!
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