so is the only reason for using a traditional publisher is the cash advance then?
A few really important things come to mind:
- Editing. I'm not talking about mere copy editing which you can get done reasonably cheaply, but rather having an editor that is reading through everything and giving feedback is hugely important.
- Layout and printing of the book There's a lot that happens between writing and having a polished book in your hands. You can contract all this out but it adds a lot of work.
- Distribution. While the burden of marketing a book has increasingly fallen upon the author these days, if you want your book to be on the shelf at your local Barnes & Noble, then your much better off going with a traditional publisher.
- Prestige. Like it or not, the vast majority of people on Earth still look down upon self publishing. For some types of books this is less important: technical books and fantasy fiction books can go without in many cases (but if you want to use your book for credibility in something like consulting you'll still want a traditional publisher). But if you want to write on a serious topic it helps a lot to have an academic press publish your work, or if you want to really pursue writing literature you at least want some publisher that is recognized in your relevant community.
Currently I think the only really good use cases for self publishing are the fantasy fiction and niche technical book markets assuming you already have an audience. And even in those cases there are plenty of reasons to go with traditional publishers over self publishing.
It is true that there are real quality issues with a lot of self-published work because you don't _need_ an editor to publish your book. Heck, you don't even need to do a self-edit pass. Write it and hit publish! But it is increasingly an expectation that you have one, because quality expectations are extremely high, especially for competitive money-making genres.
I started out self-editing and now pay for three professional edits for each release: developmental, copy, and proofread. Professional editors are not exclusive to traditional publishing houses.
My point was that, in response to the parent claiming there's nothing traditional publishers offer, these are things that traditional publishers do in fact offer an author. If you write for a traditional publisher you mostly have to just worry about writing, and, unfortunately, marketing these days.
1) placed in bookstores
2) on the "upcoming books" circulars that the trads send out to likely "author talk" venues
3) reviewed in mainstream media
just in case someone in Australia goes to a bookstore and asks for it :)
Say you have a Mexican restaurant in NYC. There must be hundreds of them, right? But imagine that someone in NYC googles "Mexican restaurant," and your restaurant is the first search result that comes up. That's worth a lot of money.
Self-publishing is like opening your own restaurant, while being published by a major publisher is like being on the first page of Google. When, say, CNN wants someone to be a panel expert, they might call you. You can get invited to conferences on the strength of that credential, and then build up to greater opportunities from there. In essence you've been socially validated.
That's worth quite a lot of money, though it's up to you if it's worth the cost. If you didn't have any fame going in, then I think it will be.
I can't speak for all writers, but here are a few reasons I have seen some authors going with a trad publisher:
* Reputation. It can just feel cool to say "Oh yeah I have a book published by Tor" (or whatever). This one is pretty weak for me. Trad publishers don't hold that much special prestige anymore.
* Translations. There are some great untapped translation markets out there (like Germany). Some authors self-publish the English version of their books and sell translation rights to a publisher. The publisher then does the work of translating and republishing in the target countries, taking that effort off the author. The royalties are lower, but funding high-quality translations can cost a fortune and for many authors offloading that cost and effort can be worth it.
* Audiobooks. Similar to translations. Author may publish the ebook themselves and sell audio rights. Good narrators can cost a fortune, and many authors can't justify that outlay themselves. A trad audiobook publisher can get access to the best narrators and fund the entire production if the author doesn't have the means or desire to do it themselves.
- the editor: if a good traditional editor gets involved in your project they can make a huge difference in the quality of your books. Many people seem to think editors are just marking up your punctuation. In reality they are more akin to product managers in software. They help set the tone of the books and ensure that the vision is adhered to.
- which leads me to copy editors. The traditional publishers employ all the best ones. You can hire independent copy editors but their quality is a crapshoot. And you don’t find out until it’s too late.
- the sales rep network. If reps like your book they will get it in front of people. Independent of marketing the boots on the ground factor can make a huge difference.
Now, you won’t necessarily get any of these benefits going with a publisher but you can’t get any of them self publishing.
I've also heard about mediocre editors that waste a lot of author time, and bad editors that ruin the project.
Overall I can’t really complain about the editing but I think the benefits were relatively modest.
Do you know a good place to get to know them or start out building some connections?
I have been doing it in the past (mostly for ads and other marketing content) but it paid very little (was working freelance for an agency) but I enjoyed it a lot.
(Tangentially, I think Germany has some special laws that you as the translator would need to be familiar with. For example I think the translator needs to grant rights to the original author to republish the work. Not 100% sure on this, but worth checking!)
I would prefer working directly with an independent author - when I have a bit more time I’ll check out how to best get in contact with them.
Not sure about the legal side of it, but I have a friend who works in German copyright and who could probably help figure that part out.
They are author as opposed to translator-focused, but maybe reaching out to them can be a first step in getting the lay of the land? They might have some information about how their authors tend to use translation services. Although I'm sure there must be some translator communities out there that could provide even more focused info.
To be specific, between $200 and $300 per finished hour, and a finished hour is about 9,000 words. It can cost more if you want two or more narrators to handle male/female parts (there's a lot more editing involved).
I know at least one self-published author who does create audiobooks for some of their works, but does so at a loss. Even at $15 per audiobook sale (through bookfunnel, so there's little overhead), making back the $3k they pay for the narration is a pretty high bar for a relatively niche market.
I think it's a validation thing, largely. If you get trad-published but the book does poorly—well, at least you got trad-published, so you must not be too awful (although... if you're in certain "hot" niches, there's some real crap put out, that looks like it was barely even edited), but your book just didn't land well. It happens. But you're an author, for sure.
If you self-publish and your book doesn't do well—did you market poorly? Would it have done better with a trad publisher? Are you... in fact so terrible at writing you shouldn't call yourself an author, and it didn't sell because it's total crap? You may never know!
Since there's not real, real money in it unless your book's such a hit you get movie deals and such (with rare outliers who make it big-enough purely on book sales but don't get adaptation interest) it's largely about being an author, so having that validation up-front has real appeal.
I know a guy, for example, that worked two years in his spare time on one game, got picked up by a publisher, ended up in Barnes and Noble and was considered a success by the publisher (they even requested and released an expansion), and the guy got only $9,000 in royalties (with no advance) for all his efforts.
Pretty much the only people making enough money for it to be their sole form of income are either hired directly a publisher or are out there hustling constantly and signing like 8+ game designs a year, or have insanely cheap cost of living (one game designer mentioned how he made net income of $12k one year and was able to survive off that because they live super cheaply), or have somehow landed on a massive evergreen hit, like Azul or Carcassonne.
[1] https://twitter.com/JPacCantin/status/1647455444884156417
You think most new authors have wealthy families?
That is a very odd assumption, given how hard it is to write a book... and given how low the returns are... and given how many other ways there are to achieve prestige... and given how little people regard authorship these days as a measurement of it... and given how unlikely it would be for wealth to have an outsized representation in a career generally associated with poverty... and how all old authors were once new authors which would imply that most of them are wealthy too, which, not so.
Further, to address your own point, they are not even the representation of successful authors. There's thousands and thousands of successful authors that aren't even near to being close to the gates of the Western canon.
In the 20th century, there have been hundred of thousands to a million different titles published. If even 10% of those authors made enough money to be considered a living wage, it absolutely dwarfs the number of authors in the cannon, which is on the scale of 100s, not thousands.
If the cannon is your standard, your standard excludes almost the entire industry.
It is worth pointing out that there's nothing particular odd if it were the case that writing was subsidized by wealthy families. For the vast majority of the history of writing, writing was subsidized an left to monks, philosophers or aristocrats. It's only been in the relatively recent time period that writing was a potential occupation for anyone interested with enough skills/talent.
Anyone trying to make any amount of money at writing writes genre fic of one sort or another. Fantasy or maybe sci fi, and probably "juvenile fiction" (tends to sell better to adults, too). Romance (which may or may not actually be straight-up porn, basically). Airport thrillers. Not lit-fic. Never, if your goal is to make any money at all.
And yeah, the publishing-side heavily favors people with money, lit-fic or not, for the reason that making a living at it requires excellent connections to get you directly into a high-paying part of it, or else years and years making less than it takes to live on in places like New York, to work your way up the ladder. Either way, that probably means family money. This phenomenon been mentioned, directly or obliquely, in IIRC all of: Bullshit Jobs (Graeber, 2018), Fussell's Class (1983), and The Official Preppy Handbook (Birnbach et al, 1980).