A Guide to Traditional Vs. Self Publishing
How will you get your book out into the world?
I had a conversation in the Ninja Writer’s Facebook group the other day that made me realize that I’ve never really written about traditional vs. indie (or self) publishing.
I actually hate writing it that way — traditional vs. indie — because it seems like I’m pitting them against each other in some kind of mud wrestling match or something.
We’re all just authors trying to get our books in front of readers the best way we can. And there are pros and cons about both publishing models. There are also ways to combine the two, which are usually called hybrid publishing (I’ll discuss that some at the bottom of this post.)
Let’s start with some vocab.
Traditional publishing: In this model the author assigns the publishing rights to their book to a third party publisher who prints and sells the book through booksellers and other retailers and pays the author a royalty per book sold.
Indie publishing: In this model the author maintains the publishing rights and is responsible for every level of the publishing process, including printing and selling the book. They retain all of the income from the sales (minus fees to retailers, etc.)
