Like all of your upcoming books, your first book is your baby. Your book is not just words jotted on pages – it is your work of love, time, effort, and money.
So, when you place your trust in a company – it doesn’t matter whether you are following the route of traditional publishing or opting for self-publishing; you will want to ensure that you are making the right decision.
Traditional vs. Self-Publishing
As an aspiring writer, you might want to know the difference between self publishing and traditional publishing. No matter the genre, self-publishing is a team effort – from story structure, writing, editing, cover design, book promotion, and final marketing.
When you opt for traditional book publishing, the essential beauty of this is that you might get some cash in advance. You also have that clout behind you and a certain sense of validation.
If you opt for self-publishing, you have a lot more control as you can publish anywhere and anytime.
With traditional publishing, you don’t own any rights – so there are a lot of different aspects that one has to consider with traditional publishing. On the contrary, with self-publishing, you keep your rights and royalties and also have creative control – which is a great choice to have in the bigger picture of book publishing.
A lot of things get taken care of with traditional publishing; whereas, with self-publishing, you are your own boss making any decisions yourself, such as the following:
- Who is the editor?
- Who will proofread the manuscript?
- Who is going to print the books?
- Who is going to do the legal work?
If you are okay with self-publishing, you will also have to figure out the logistics around it. Every step of the self-publishing journey demands various expertise and particular skill sets – that, when combined, can help you achieve the goal of a well-written, marketable book with an amazing hook.
You might think of self-publishing as the mainstream method of publishing now. And for the majority of newbie authors – self-publishing is a great option. In fact, often, self-publishing is a better option than traditional publishing.
Just because an author spends money on self-publishing doesn’t mean that their book isn’t good enough to be traditionally published.
Another popular way of getting your book published is hybrid publishing.
What is Hybrid Publishing?
In case you haven’t heard about hybrid publishing before, you might want to know whether it is worth the price and effort. Hybrid publishing could be the best of both worlds for your writing career. In traditional publishing, you sign a contract with potential publishers to publish your book.
Often you require an agent’s assistance to access the publishing houses. Depending on the contract, you can also get paid in advance. Or, you could get higher royalties with the publication house if you opt for traditional publishing.
As mentioned before, with traditional publishing, all expenses are covered by the publishing house for the production and marketing of the book. However, even with traditional publishing, the authors usually have to market their own books.
On the contrary, self-publishing plays out differently. The author doesn’t necessarily need an agent but can publish their book on their own. Also, the author won’t have to sign a contract with a specific publishing house – but they have to handle all the tasks and expenses of producing and marketing their book.
Besides, the author is also in full control of when their book comes out and what formats they want to make their book in. More importantly, self-published authors retain all their rights and profits.
Now when it comes to hybrid publishing, there are publishing houses that take aspects from both of these routes of traditional and self-publishing and kind of merge them together.
For instance, you might publish under a certain publishing house, but you may have to incur some production, warehousing, marketing, and distribution costs. While the costs depend on the publishing house, you can retain most of your rights with hybrid publishing.
Who is a hybrid author?
Suppose an author publishes both traditional and independent books – at one point or another, these authors might have signed a traditional contract and also have self-published some of their work. These authors are known as hybrid authors.
What are the potential benefits of hybrid publishing?
At this point, you might be thinking about how you can use hybrid publishing to your advantage. You might as well think about how hybrid publishing can benefit your writing career.
Now, with traditional publishing, it can take up to two years for the book to come out and make its place on bookshelves. After getting your contract, however, hybrid publishing means you can self-publish your books between the timeline and make money.
This can be quite beneficial when you are waiting for the production process, advance payment, or royalties. It wouldn’t be wrong to state that you can make more money with hybrid publishing, as self-published authors make more money on their books and don’t share royalties with a publishing house or pay commission to an agent.
As a self-publishing author, you get direct paychecks from vendors, such as Amazon or any other platform you choose to publish on. You also have the benefit of selling your books directly from your business website, which enables you to earn more royalties.
As a hybrid-publishing author, you can also publish in different genres. Traditional publishing tends to lean towards the more popular genres at the time – and any other genres outside the popular ones seem to be called dead.
That said, many successful self-published authors have written on the dead genres on their own – and made loads of money in the process. To become a successful hybrid-publishing author, you will need to find out who your target audience or ideal readers are.
Afterward, you will be hybrid-publishing to your ideal readers, who will be ravenous to read their favorite types of books that they typically cannot get at their local bookstore run by a traditional publishing space.
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