Browsing through the New York Times, I read an article called “Self-Publishers Flourish as Writers Pay the Tab” by Motoko Rich. Rich points that self-publishing companies are growing rapidly whereas many mainstream publishers are losing ground. Author Solutions, based in Bloomington, Indiana, is known to be the largest self publishing company that operates self publishers like Author House, iUniverse, and more. According to the article, Author Solutions represented 19,000 titles in 2008, nearly six times more than Random House. The income, however, is still a fraction of the wider publishing industry; Brown sold more copies of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight than the total copies Author Solutions sold in the year 2008, which is 2.5 million.
As Rich states, self publishing seems to flourish for a variety of reasons: “The trend is also driven by professionals who want to use a book as an enhanced business card as well as by people who are creating books as gifts for family and friends.” The fact that I can publish a book just to give to a friend as a present atonishes me. For as little as $3, the article suggests, I can upload a manuscript to be ordered for a printed book within an hour. For beginning authors in particular, self publishing is a faster method to put their books in the market. Although the chances of being discovered by a mainstream publishing house are rare, it is a much faster way to get into the market than through traditional publishers. Well, at least one can avoid being rejected by a number of agents. The negative aspects of self publishing are that there are no advance payments and they have “diminished access to the vast bookstore distribution pipeline that big publishers can provide.” There are fortunate authors like Lisa Genova who self published Still Alice through the iUniverse, which eventually sold copies to numerous bookstores.
There are opposing views on self publishing. Louise Burke, publisher of Pocket Books, said that “publishers now trawl for new material by looking at reader comments about self-published books sold online.” On the other hand, Cathy Langer, lead buyer for the Tattered Cover bookstores in Denver, gave a more pessimistic impression by saying, “People think that just because they’ve written something, there’s a market for it. It’s not true.”
If I were to publish a book, I’m not quite sure whether to go through the traditional publishers or to get into the market fast by self publishing. There are pros and cons in self publishing but what appears to be evident is that the self publishing companies are flourishing.
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