Lily
Administrator
Posts: 2,197
Joined: May 2011
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Post by Lily on Jun 21, 2012 18:50:21 GMT -5
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jd
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Posts: 61
Joined: June 2011
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Post by jd on Jun 23, 2012 16:43:16 GMT -5
Good one. That's why I went the self pub route.
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greg
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Posts: 96
Joined: June 2011
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Post by greg on Jun 26, 2012 15:53:02 GMT -5
"Traditional" publishing is dead in the water. The only route for an author today is to self publish.
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Richard
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Posts: 610
Joined: July 2011
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Post by Richard on Jun 27, 2012 12:44:08 GMT -5
Anyone on here have any success, "lately," with entering traditional publishing?
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Lily
Administrator
Posts: 2,197
Joined: May 2011
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Post by Lily on Jun 28, 2012 3:33:56 GMT -5
No. Of course, I have to admit I haven't tried.
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Post by bpublisher on Jan 17, 2013 7:57:07 GMT -5
Standard publishing is not even close to being dead. Self publishing is only 17% of the market. The truth being, most of the 17% would not stand to the mark of Standard Publisher requirements. If a self published book can gross $500 per year, and net minus $2000, your doing good. Sure, there are exceptions to this…very few. Anybody can scribble something like this; gek5^&((&$%$kb, self publish it, and say…“I’m a published author.” If that’s what you want go for it. Don’t give up your day job, bills still have to be paid. I do recommend you self publish some of your work on the internet. Reason?
Taxes and the Writer - The Legal Resource for Publishing ... Self-employment tax is a social security and Medicare tax ... according to the IRS in ... your friends at the IRS will say your writing is a "hobby ...www.publishlawyer.com/carousel8.htm - Cached
Yes…it’s a great tax write off. Keep your good writing for the standard publisher path.
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Post by The Tourist on Jan 17, 2013 8:28:56 GMT -5
I can understand self publishing if you figure your future is going to shift to writing full-time.
However, if sharpening is my part-time job, then writing is my 1/4 time job. However, what if this is the only book I ever write?
Perhaps foolish, but I was looking for professionals to guide the process.
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zizban
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Posts: 4
Joined: January 2014
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Post by zizban on Jan 27, 2014 19:37:31 GMT -5
I am also a traditionally published author. I'm all for self publishing but to say traditional publishing is dead or dying is off the mark.
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john
Member
Posts: 44
Joined: January 2012
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Post by john on Jan 28, 2014 12:04:26 GMT -5
I was a small business owner for decades and then retired. I had never intended to earn my living as a writer, even though I had always wanted to write from the age of eight, when I read two of Mark Twain's novels. When I was about thirteen, I read Faulkner’s The Bear, and thought he had a gift straight from God. I couldn’t get over how well he described the Southern hunting woods and swamps and how he put the reader THERE, experiencing what the character felt. I also thought his page-long sentences were cool and felt as if he was trying to cram as much feeling and soul into each sentence as possible and still he wasn’t satisfied, wanting to stuff even more into each sentence.
Despite all the desire I had to write, I also thought I just would never be able to. I didn't think I had any talent for it at all, and my education and life experiences were as far from the literary world as you could get. My small business kept me busy day and night, seven days a week and I just had no time to waste on anything that had a small chance of ever putting a dime in my bank account. Nevertheless, not long after I retired young and finally had the time to study fiction writing and apply myself, I gave it a try. After all, I didn't need to actually earn a living at it. At first, I knew nothing about self-publishing, except that everyone said it was for losers and it would kill any chances of becoming a "real" writer and being published the “right” way.
After learning more about the process of begging an agent to bestow her/his gift of taking a percentage of my earnings and shopping my manuscript around to publishers, I tried that route. I admit I didn’t try that hard. I sent out only about a dozen or so queries before I decided I wasn’t going to suddenly become dependent on others to structure my future, not after being self-employed with no boss for most of my life. I also learned that almost everyone in the publishing business is to the left of Marx. I had been in the free enterprise system where you stand or fall on your own two feet for too long to grovel at the feet of Socialists.
About that time I started learning more about self-publishing through Amazon and looked into it. From what I had been told, the chances of selling even a hundred copies a year were slim. I thought it would be better than burning the two manuscripts I had put two years of steady work into (while at the same time teaching myself how to write fiction by reading every book on writing I could find), so I self-published. That was over three years and a dozen novels and short stories ago. Last month I made $15,000. This month so far I have made over $11,000. If I could write as fast as some (and actually had real talent), I could make $20 or $30 grand every month. Since everything I can learn about the average traditionally published novelist tells me most of them do NOT make a good living at it (just like most actors wash dishes and wait on tables for a living), I must come to the conclusion that self-publishing can be more profitable than going the agent/publisher route, despite of the fact most self-published writers never make a living at it. What I AM certain of is I have made more money and sold more copies of my books than I ever would have if I had spent the last three years sending out “queries,” or what I call begging letters. No, I will never have “acclaim” or sell a hundred million copies or make millions a year, but I am glad I didn’t burn those manuscripts and decided to become a “loser” self-published writer.
The agent/publisher world is not in the world I live in. I only care about the financial health of Amazon, B&N, etc and hope they never stop making it possible for untalented losers like me to self-publish and sell books. It’s a great hobby that pays well. I probably made a hundred bucks while posting this. In recent years, many traditionally published novelists have left the agent/publisher world and found to their astonishment that they are now making more money than they ever made before. Some have actually stated that they were forced to leave their agent/publisher. They just couldn’t afford to work for nothing any longer. This after dozens of published books over their writing career.
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