Traditional publishing vs. self-publishing

(serene electronic music) - This specific course is designed to take you step by step through the process of getting traditionally published. Now let me a take a moment to clarify what I mean by traditionally published. Publishing traditionally is the process of selling your novel to a traditional publisher. Which is a publisher who pays you in advance for your book. Pays you royalties on all the copies that are sold.

And who markets, promotes, publicizes, and most important distributes your books through nationwide channels. Like Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Target, Walmart, Costco, Airport bookstores, and the supermarkets. This is compared to self publishing. A process through which you are responsible for all your own marketing, publicity, promotion, and often times distribution. Now don't get me wrong. I have nothing against the self-publishing industry or self-published authors. I know a lot of talented authors who have gone this route and have been extremely successful.

Self-publishing can be a good choice for a lot of reasons. But this course will not cover self-publishing. This course is specifically designed to help you sell your novel to a traditional publisher. There are hundreds of traditional publishers in the world ranging in all sizes and scopes. The biggest and most well known in the U.S. include Penguin Random House, Harper Collins, Simon and Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. You can also add Disney Hyperion, and Scholastic to the list when discussing children's and young adult books. Each of these publishers are then broken down into tens, sometimes even hundreds of what the industry calls imprints or divisions.

There are also several smaller publishers who do a fantastic job for their authors. And who sometimes specialize in more niche areas of the publishing industry. The choice to self publish or traditionally publish is one that every author has to make on their own. It's a personal choice which comes down to your own preferences and goals. I chose traditional publishing for three primary reasons. One, I wanted to focus on writing. I didn't want to be in charge of handling all the other aspects of the publishing industry like marketing and sales and distribution and publicity.

I wanted to focus on what I do best, which is writing. Although I do sometimes supplement the publisher's marketing plans with my own marketing efforts. Two, I wanted to be paid upfront for my work. As someone who makes a living from writing books, this aspect of traditional publishing is very important to me. Along those same lines of book income, I found that it's easier to sell your books to international publishers when you're traditionally published. This falls under the category of translation rights, which we'll talk about later on in this course.

And believe it or not, more than half of my income as an author comes from translation rights. And three, I wanted to improve my chances of having my work optioned for film and television. Which is typically, but not always easier when you're traditionally published. Because your agent usually works directly with film agents in Hollywood who submit your book to producers and movie studios. But once again, this is your own personal choice. However since you bought this course, I'm assuming you're interested in the traditional publishing path and trying to sell your novel to a major publisher.

And I'm here to guide you on that path, are you ready? Let's go.