Six Myths about Book Publishing

As a certified book coach and editor, I’ve worked with many different kinds of independent authors. Some of the more common, harmful assumptions I’ve heard are covered below related to working with agents, selecting publishing routes, and other aspects of the publishing process. I’ve gleaned tidbits about these myths from hundreds of hours of professional development in recent years, and while working with six publishers.

Hybrid Publishers Are the Same as Vanity Presses

This one is an oldie that doesn’t serve to hang onto. Hybrid publishing has become a legitimate option in the last decade. For one thing, it offers an alternative for writers who don’t get traction with traditional publishers for several reasons, including content that’s deemed too controversial (that is, going hybrid doesn’t mean an author’s work isn’t good, as legit hybrids have standards too).  Some authors choose this intermediate option between self-publishing and traditional for reasons that include having more control over their book’s development (and potentially more income from the outcome). You do have to pay for editing and other services yourself with a hybrid, and paying $7,000 or more for their services isn’t unusual.  

Understanding your publishing options can make book development more efficient

Traditional Publishers Will Handle All Your Marketing Needs  

It once was true that the big publishers would develop thorough marketing plans for authors. But their share of the market has shrunk in recent times, and even named writers may have their marketing needs back burnered by a big house. For instance, I’ve heard an accomplished author talk about how he had to negotiate a major national interview himself because his work came out at the same time that a top publisher was focused on trumpeting a celebrity’s book.

You may want to hire a literary publicist to supplement a publishing house’s outreach if you gain a traditional publisher, as a result (I’ve even known a science writer for The New York Times who hired an independent proofreader to do a last round of checks for errors in book content, despite the fact that most publishers provide several rounds of copy editing and proofreading).

If marketing reach matters to you, and you go the hybrid route, it’ll be important to ask questions about what they specifically offer in terms of marketing outreach (as discussed further in the comparative post shared below). Or, if you will self-publish, you could independently hire a publicist, or learn about marketing through author-related groups, workshops, and other offerings (including works like Dan Blank’s Be The Gateway, which emphasizes focusing on building relationships rather than simply producing marketing content).

You Should Accept the First Agent that Shows Interest

It’s not unheard of to pitch 50-plus agents over six or more months before getting interest.  For that and other reasons related to not knowing the agent landscape, some writers may feel obliged to take the first agent that shows interest in their work. But if your work is solid, there’s likely more than one agent who’ll be interested. Making sure an agent is passionate about your content and you is important too, and is akin to finding a life partner: they should get why your work is valuable, feel like someone you can trust through thick and thin, and help you develop the best plan for not only pitching your current book, but for where you see yourself as a writer five or more years down the line.

Once you get interest from one agent, you can tell any others whom you're still waiting to hear back from that that's the case, to see if they'll take a closer look at you before you delve in deep with the initial agents. Among the questions to ask if a long career is the goal is whether you’ll be able to independently publish other works beyond the book or books an agent represents, and whether they agent all the genres you’re likely to publish in.

If you’re having ongoing trouble getting agent interest for work that professional coaches and such have deemed in good shape, consider whether your current outreach to readers could be strengthened some, particularly if your work is nonfiction (though some writers, like journalists and academics, can still get agent interest without having a strong audience reach).

A Publishing Service with a Booth at a Major Book Fair, an Involved Website, Etc., Is Trustworthy

Vanity presses, fake literary agent websites and the like exist, and they sometimes manage to sneak in the door of major literary festivals and other venues. But keeping your radar up by doing due diligence on service providers will help keep you from going astray. As I cover in a post linked to below, sites like WriterBeware provide lists of bad actors and tips on how to ID the features of scammers. The latter is important because these individuals or companies can change their name to fly under the radar once they’ve been flagged as such. So, approaching them like you would a general email scammer, i.e. comparing what they say to what’s expected of that type of business, is important before moving forward with book provider services.

Some publishing routes have some timing flexibility

It's Best to Choose a Publishing Path Early

When it comes to deciding between the traditional publishing versus the indie route, you can always start out with the notion of publishing traditionally (where they cover sentence-level editing and print costs and some marketing), and pivot to self-publishing should you feel like the agent hunt is unproductive. Hybrid also works as a back-up option to traditional publishing for writers without a bare bones budget, though these publishers usually have some stipulations on what they'll take. The Independent Book Publishers Association unveiled detailed content about the different publishing paths earlier this year.

A True Writer Does All the Publishing Steps

If your pockets are deep, or your goal is primarily to use a (nonfiction) book as a tool to showcase your expertise, then hiring service providers to handle aspects such as formatting, printing, and marketing your book is more possible than ever due to boutique agencies and such. On the writing front, you could hire a book coach to help you develop the book idea and/or content and guide you on improving a draft manuscript, or even hire an experienced writer to write the work (ghostwriting is something I do for select nonfiction projects, for instance, and is also somewhat common for memoir).

Workarounds exist for other parts of the author life, as well. That includes hiring an accountant to help on the financial side of things, and reaching out to the communications college of your local university to see if any developing marketing students want to weigh in on your social media strategy for a relatively small fee, including doing content creation itself. 

By Barbra A. Rodriguez

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