No Agent? No Publisher? No Problem.

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged a help wanted ad for an agent. Nothing came of it, and guess what? I'm fine with that. The more I learn about traditional publishing, the more I realize I'm better off as an indie. Why? Well, I read on The Writer's Guide to E-Publishing that the average advance for new author, or even a mid-list author is just $5,000. The agent takes their 15%, and the payment isn't even paid in one lump sum, but instead is split into 3 or more payments.

I found out even more about the business end from this site, written by a NY Times Bestselling author, Jeaniene Frost,  Publishing Money Myths . If I remember correctly, I read that blog a year or so ago and I kept the information in the back of my mind. When Joe Konrath started blogging about how he had self-published, it all kind of came together and made sense to me.

Ms. Frost talks about advances, royalty rates, and reserves. For instance, using her example, a 8% royalty on a mass market paperback that sells for $6.99 would net the author  $0.55/copy. They would need to sell 9,000 to pay out the advance. If they don't sell that many, the advance is all they will ever receive for that book. If they do sell more, that's great, but there's a huge time lag (at least to me) between publishing date and the time an author would get a check since the publishers only pay twice a year. Yeah, you read that right. 2x year! Yikes! Then the first payment will probably be eaten up paying back your advance, and held as a reserve against returns.

Compare that to the monthly payments from Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) or Barnes&Noble's Pubit, who both pay every 30 days, with the payment direct deposited in the author's account.  I think this alone is the #1 advantage and I don't think I could get used to a 2x/year payment schedule. They way it is now, I can budget a few months in advance since there is only a sixty day lag for payment. (Paid monthly, but first payment is 30 days after the end of the month you first upload, so I'll be getting payment next week for books sold in June.)  Plus, I don't have to pay an agent anything. ;-)

There's also the fact that indie authors get real-time numbers on their sales. It's kind of a joke that we're all addicted to checking our numbers. I love being able to tell  right away what kind of marketing is working.

Both of my books have earned way more than the typical advance, so I'm already ahead of the game in that area. It took time for them to take off, and I'm not sure that time would have been granted if they had gone the traditional route.

People say, "But traditionally published books are better because they've been edited and have professional covers."

Guess what? Indie books can have those things too!  I just found a wonderful editor for my third book and the cost wasn't exorbitant.  I'm hoping that maybe my friend, the awesome YA author,  Imogen Rose, will help me with the cover for the third, (she did the cover for NGD, and added the new font to MIH),  but she's a very busy lady these days, so if she can't, I'm prepared to pay a cover artist.  All I have to do is ask around on Kindleboards in the Writer's Cafe, and I'm sure I'll get plenty of recommendations. Prices vary, but I'm putting aside some money from sales of NGD & MIH to pay for this, and every time I go to Kindleboards, I see the work these cover artists have done. Gone are the days of the crappy self-published covers.

So, tell me, what can traditional publishing do for me that I can't do for myself or pay someone else a one time fee to do? Marketing? Not usually. Oh sure, there would be an initial push, but publishers always have another book coming down the pipeline, so in a few weeks, my book would be forgotten, and I'd have to market it myself--just like I'm doing now, but I'd have less control since I wouldn't be able to run sales.

I've already built a decent sized and very supportive reader base on my own, so that's not a reason to choose traditional over Indie. Vetting? Thousands of actual readers have done that already.

So, for me, I think I'm done looking for a literary agent or traditional publishers. They've decided over the last 18 months that they didn't want my books, but it took me this long to realize I don't want them either. My one exception would be Amazon Encore or one of Amazon's new imprints. I've heard good things about them; that they have a different model, and it sounds like it could be the best of both worlds.