When I came out of grad school, writers had to bank on traditional publishing houses to choose them for a sense of worth and/or credibility. You could self-publish—it was called vanity publishing then—but that had all the panache of finding a spouse in the classified section of a newspaper. So not cool! Maybe, even a little pathetic.
But then the publishing industry basically imploded in 2008 thanks to the market crash. Amazon entered the fray a year later, and all bets were off. Publishing became the wild wild west.
Despite the numerous (and might I add respectable) publishing options available to folks who want their book out in the world, the old dream of the book deal is very much alive and well. Traditional publishing is still the brass ring many writers reach for.
If you have a similar dream, I’d like to share some facts about the industry you may not be familiar with only because you haven’t spent the last fifteen years operating in this world…some truths I found horrific the first time I smacked into them. These insights will also help me explain why writing a check to a hybrid publisher may be SO much cheaper than receiving one from a traditional house.
You still get to choose to head down this road with your book in hand—I help authors evaluate this option all the time—but do so with your eyes WIDE open.
#1. Good writing does not guarantee the interest of a traditional publishing house.
The hardest thing to stomach is that, even if you’ve written a book 10X better than anything currently on the market, NO ONE in the traditional publishing world will care. No one will clamor at your door or fight for the chance to raise you from obscurity because you write so goshdarn well.
Look, we’re all about polished writing at Summit Press Publishers. We’re interested in well-written powerful books that stand to change lives. But that’s NOT what the book industry is about on the whole.
Am I saying that traditional publishing houses aren’t interested in well-written books that stand to change lives? No, of course not.
What I am saying is that they require ever so much more.
For a big traditional publishing house to take an interest in you and your prescriptive non-fiction book, you’ll need at least two of three things. A big platform, a hot topic, and/or that extremely well-written book.
Let me expound.
Does your well-written book cover a topic that’s taken the country by storm?
Think Michael Lewis, author of Premonition, who’d been researching the story of an epidemiologist in California who knew that a pandemic was about to hit…..JUST AS COVID breaks!
Do you have a well-written book AND a platform?
If you don’t know what that word means, that’s OK. But that’s also a sign that you don’t have one. So, let me explain.
Big houses want to be your friend if you have a massive following of people actively engaged with your content. Now, I’m not talking 16k followers on TikTok (insert social media channel of choice); I’m talking 100s of 1000s of die-hard rabid fans who comment on your posts at all hours of the day and night and share your stuff with everyone they know…
Or 100s of 1000s who currently hand you money for your related products or services. Meaning you have a list, run a successful online business, and know how to market and sell your wares…
Or you’ve got lots of important and/or famous friends who do, who guarantee that they will go to bat for you when the book hits the market and bring in tons of sales.
Publishing is a business. Traditional publishing houses sell books; that’s how they keep the lights on. That’s how they monetize. They want a near guarantee that anything you produce will sell and that you can sell it; otherwise, you represent too significant a risk.
You may think you’ve got 3 aces, but they see a pair of twos.
#2. Traditional publishing houses don’t buy non-fiction books; they buy book proposals.
If you’ve got a full-blown non-fiction manuscript and you’re ready to publish, I’ve got some terrible news. Traditional publishing houses want to see a book proposal, not your manuscript, to help them determine if your book idea is salable and if you’re the one who ought to be writing it, as opposed to some sexier expert.
I can almost hear the psychic scream.
For God’s sake, it’s already done…. Can’t these people just read what I’ve written?!
No.
Let’s return to how traditional publishing houses make money: book sales.
A book proposal presents publishing houses with the necessary metrics to make a sound business decision. How many readers buy books on this topic? Within the last three or so years? Given the books currently on the market, why would anybody choose to purchase a book by you?? That sort of thing.
You won’t be able to tell how many books any one title has sold, but you can see its Amazon rating and the number of reviews. If a comparable title published in the last three years is #5 in the category in which your book would be housed and has 800ish 5-star ratings, you’re looking at a seller.
The traditional house is gambling on your book, particularly if you’re an unknown author. They need evidence that the book is likely to be a hit and that the house stands to win. Otherwise, some executive will have to lay off a bunch of poorly paid employees and give up the big annual bonus when the thing flops. And a significant portion of their acquisitions will flop, statistically speaking. It’s built into their business model.
Traditional houses are not in the dream business. (Neither is Hollywood, for that matter.) This is all about probability and profitability. Cold hard cash.
Of course there are 10 other things you ought to know if you want to save yourself a ton of time and money. You can access the entire report for free by going HERE.
