By Hannah Johnson
As mentioned in today’s lead article, author Timothy Ferris, author of The 4-Hour Workweek, gave a presentation at LeWeb about how his personal marketing efforts with online tools and social media put his book onto national bestseller lists, while his publisher’s efforts with traditional media were less effective.
Yesterday, Seth Godin released a free e-book online, and Steven Covey announced that he will give Amazon exclusive rights to his e-books for a year. More often, well-known authors are sidestepping the traditional path to getting published.
While this means these authors have to deal with more issues themselves, it also means a greater percentage of the profits. What value do traditional publishers bring to famous authors? What are the benefits of choosing an alternative path to getting published?
Let us know in the comments below or on Twitter using the hashtag #ppbonus.
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Megan
7 months ago
I see more and more of this type of thing happening with major authors. Why in the world do they need publishers anymore? They already have an established fan base. It used to be that mid-list authors needed publishers help too but the truth is, publishers put little marketing muscle behind them. There’s very little they can offer any more than author cannot do themselves, especially when it comes to e-books.
Erin
7 months ago
While I totally agree, Megan, there are things that a writer benefits from by being published in-house. You get the sales and distribution channels, you get the relationships with media/bookstores and the support of a team, not to mention the expertise and experience of all of the people working on your book.
Shem Cohen
7 months ago
In all of this, it seems lost on people that publishers – big ones at least – do offer more than distribution: expertise in editing, design, publicity and promotion. Of course some people think they do everything better than anyone else and don’t benefit from that. But even those people often want what publishers offer: financing. Advances often make creating the book possible in the first place, and when they go unearned protect the author from downside risk. You never hear discussions of these issues when a Seth Godin like person talks and it is, I think, at best unhelpful.
Ric Day
7 months ago
Shem makes some good points, but the question posed is about famous authors and I think we may accept that financing is not the first concern of those authors. Most serious authors are very aware of the need for professional editing and design. Commercial authors such as Stephen King, Steven Covey, and Dan Brown are their own “brands” and few consumers have a clue who actually publishes them. For those authors, creating their own imprint and gathering together a handful of trusted people (editors, designers, publicists, marketers) to work on a freelance basis and perhaps earn a percentage on sales would likely produce a far higher income than they currently earn with their traditional publishers. I suspect what Ferris and Covey are doing is the start of what will become a trend over the next few years.
Ed
7 months ago
It strikes me that the authors who forgo traditional publishers by-and-large fall into three categories: those who cannot attract the interest of one, those who feel they know and can do better, those that can afford to do so — the aforementioned famous authors — who can hire all the expertise they need, including distribution. I still think authors who are actual writers — and yes, Stephen Kind and Dan Brown are primarily writers — will want to stick with traditional publishers. It will free them to spend time writing. An author like Stephen Covey is something different — a business brand who makes far more money speaking and conducting seminars. His book sales primarily fall outside traditional distribution channels of bookstores. He’s the type of guy who sells the books off a table at his events and or at the back of his acolytes events. Going to Amazon for e-book distribution is perfect for him. I would be so easy to say offer a 10% discount for all those who immediately download a book of his at an event, for example. This is where the flexibility and convenience of working in digital really shines.
Will Entrekin
7 months ago
Interesting post, but I think a better question than “Should Authors Even Bother?” is, rather, how and when authors should enlist the services of traditional publishers. It’s obvious authors don’t need publishers for digital distribution anymore; no one needs a publisher to get on a Kindle or develop an app.
What publishers are good for, then, is not so much gatekeeping as content development, as well as physical manufacture of a souvenir (that is, books).
The times they are a-changin’.
Ed brings up a terrific point: so long as it’s not just authors who can’t attract the attention of traditional publishers who decide to go another route, all routes really should be explored. As George Harrison sang, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road’ll take you there.” Even when you do know where you want to be, there are lots of ways to get there.
Stas Antons
7 months ago
Books often create entire eco-sphere around them: fan clubs, movies, devoted readers exchanging ideas. Also, authors are often interviewed by the media, a fact that contributes to the overall image of the book.
I agree with Ed’s analysis – depends on the book. Although, sometimes it does take a very long time for a worthy book to gain the fame it deserves.
-Stas Antons
SmartSymbols for Books
Eva Ulian
7 months ago
I’m not sure what famous authors should or should not do, I just know independent publishing is certainly working in my case. After years of obscurity, not knowing how to get my history of Rajasthan into print, finally the breakthrough has come and I will be publishing “Rajput” early in 2010 with WestBow. But getting published is not really where it’s at, the big thrill for me is that such work has “engaged people’s hearts” not just one but several, a community of teachers who seem to be as enthusiastic as I am to use this narrative in their schools.
However, it is not just luck, or publicist strategies that these teachers in Rajasthan are enthusiastic- it is because a history of Rajasthan on a continuous basis spanning fifteen hundred years in a “user-friendly” English has never existed before. That is why these teachers wanted to get involved because they too saw as Michael Hyatt states in his blog “a really big vision.”
It would have been quite useless to have got an agent involved. Since I am familiar with India and its people, this was something I had to do myself- who else could have approached these people better with this type of book? It would have been insane even to try.
Of course, there are still problems to overcome on how to make these books accessible in an economy so different from ours, how to organize these teachers so as to give them the confidence to tackle the work and so on. But I am sure all will be resolved even if it means, as I plan to do, go to Rajasthan myself and oversee the project. As far as I am concerned, there are times when an author has to go for it alone, and this is one of them.
Bradley Robb
7 months ago
It really is a double edged sword for publishers, isn’t it?
The current publishing trend amongst the more ambitious and modern imprints is to have authors build their own “platforms” not just for non-fiction books, but also fiction writers. The logic amongst publishers is to lower risk (in the form of lower advances) in turn for greater potential for rewards (in the form of higher royalty rates).
After all, when an author can brand themselves effectively – that is to create an established base which the author can directly communicate with – they can help drive that base, building hype for new books, which then turn into sales. Publishers recognize that author platforms in the digital sphere are marketing on the cheap.
In that end, the an author with a platform is a great thing for a publisher.
The second edge of the afore mentioned sword comes into play when the brand grows bigger than the publisher, or when the author starts to believe their own hype, and thinks they can get a larger return by assuming more of the risk. An author with a platform is just one or two whispered suggestions away from becoming a selfpublished author. Or starting their own imprint. Or looking to team up with other authors. Or doing any of the various alternative publishing schemes currently being floated about.
I was working as, or recovering from, being a music journalist when many of the larger-name indie bands started experimenting with this. Both Radiohead and NIN earned a lot more money while exerting a greater sense of artistic control over their works. Others, like Public Enemy, aren’t finding that much success. In each case, the deciding factor seemed to be how a) how impassioned the community the artist built was b) how well the artist interacted with their community and c) the perceived value of the experiment in the eyes of the community.
I have a feeling that 2010 might actually see a couple of branded authors in the fiction and trade communities trying this. Perhaps as a dalliance, where an author chooses to self-publish or digitally publish a work they’d been experimenting on as an experiment while maintaining their current relationship with their publisher.
It would only take a couple of success stories from larger names to supply those whispered suggestions in the ears of other authors.
The big question, though, the one in the title of the blog post? Should a famous author try this? Only if they want to find out just how much work it is to build an impassioned community of their own. That’s the hidden math that isn’t reflected the success stories.
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