Authors who are uncertain about signing a contract with a publisher who has praised their book idea but is requesting a ‘contribution towards the cost of publishing’ should be cautious.
Just because a publisher asks for money does not necessarily mean its a bad thing because there are lots of successful authors who have published with hybrid or contribution based publishing. (Virginia Woolf did it, as did Mark Twain and James Joyce. William Blake did nothing else) and is considered to be a perfectly respectable way to get your book into the marketplace.
In fact, because getting published by mainstream publishers is so tricky, many authors are choosing to self-publish in the first instance by way of a stepping stone. A high-quality hybrid-published book shows the author is ambitious, organised and serious.
Serious hybrid publishers will only take on projects they believe are worth investing their own money in, confident that the book will generate a return once it hits the shelves. In fact, this is one of the main reasons why it’s so challenging for new authors to get published—the publisher needs to be certain that the book will sell.
Proper contribution based publishing companies offer the author a whole range of services from editing to jacket design to distribution. The author has complete control over every stage of production – how the book will look, how many copies are printed and how it’ll be promoted. Many contribution now offer a professional finished product and as their sophistication grows so does their influence to sell their books to the bookshops.
All this costs money, but reputable self-publishers make it clear how much each individual service costs and exactly where the money is being spent.
Even better, if the book has decent enough sales figures to prove a market exists, traditional publishers are quite likely to sit up and take notice.
Leave a Comment