 Hello everybody. E here. Welcome back to From the Desk. I think number 17. Um, this has been going on for a while. Uh, if you guys are liking the show, let me know down there in the comments below. It's actually more than 17 episodes because I had right there in the middle, I think episode six has four parts, so three additional. So we're at 20 episodes. That's nuts. Um, a little bit of update. Um, I've slowed down on the Twitter contest prompts. So if you haven't seen them every day, I just haven't gotten around to them. The nocturnal readers box situation kind of sucked the life out of me there for a little bit, but we're back at it. Um, I'll be starting back tomorrow, today's, uh, Monday. So tomorrow I'll start back with the prompts and try to keep on going. Remember you can use any one of those days you can use to enter the contest. I'll link the video at the end of this one if you missed what I'm, what I'm talking about if you don't know about the contest. So today, um, we are getting into the, which route should you take? Should you take, uh, indie publishing, small press publishing, uh, traditional publishing? I'm not going to recommend any of them. What I'm going to do is I'm going to give you the pros and cons of each and let you make a decision on your own. So first we're going to start with indie. I have done each one of these levels. Um, so I'm going to tell you the pros and cons. I'm not going to go through every single pro and con. I'm just going to go through what I thought was important in each thing. So independent publishing, if you're going to do this all by yourself without anybody else's help, you're going to start your own publishing company just for yourself to publish your books and use create space, Amazon, Kobo, uh, Barnes and Noble, whatever, to upload your stuff yourself. Nobody else is going to invest in you. You're going to kickstart it. You're, whatever you're going to do, you are the sole publisher. Um, the pros, of course, this is you retain all rights, whether they be movie options, audiobook options, print, uh, all of them, uh, digital, you retain all of that and you get the majority of the profits. I say the majority because if you go any place you sell is going to take a cut of your work, whether it be Amazon or Kobo or whatever, they're going to take something off the top. Um, with Amazon, it is, if you price above $2.99, they take 30%, you get 70%. Now if the opposite, if it's below $2.99, they take 70%, you get 30%. So, um, keep that in mind. Uh, that's why I always tell people to go with longer works instead of publishing short stories, do collections, that kind of thing. Because when you get below that $2.99 mark, and don't be the jerk that, you know, charges $2.99 for a short story, don't do that. That's not, that's not cool. Um, now the, the cons to independent publishing is really just the, uh, your lack of accessibility. Um, the more, the farther you get up on the list from independent to small press to traditionally published, basically what's your, what you're getting as far as when you're going up is convenience, um, and accessibility to be able to, for things to be accessible to you, um, to you, for you to achieve them. Uh, because as an independent, you also have to worry about if you care about the quality of your work, which I hope you do or else why are you even watching these videos? Um, it's expensive. Uh, you have to, if you don't have the, uh, the talent or the ability even, maybe you have the talent, you don't have Photoshop, all you have is MS paint. Um, you have to buy, you have to buy cover art, you have to pay for editing. Even to this day, I pay for editing because I don't trust myself and I don't suggest that you trust yourself either. Um, but we'll get, we'll get into that, uh, some other time, uh, the, the reasoning behind not editing yourself. Um, but it can get expensive on top of that. You don't have access to the same kind of stuff that say a traditionally a legacy publishing house has like a whole crew of editors. You maybe only can afford one editor. Um, now this is where it comes in. We get into the debate about whether or not you should publish if you can't afford editing. I don't think you should. If you can't afford to independently publish, that's when I would go with the small press and the traditionally, the traditional publishing houses. I'm just going to call it a legacy press because I obviously can't say traditional, uh, publishing houses, the legacy press. And what I mean by that is your, your Scribner, your Simon and Schuster, um, your crown publishing note. Those guys is what I'm talking about. Hatchet, those guys, um, small press. I'm talking about places like, uh, deadite, sinister grin, eight, no, sorry, apex is gone. Um, journal stone. Let's see here. Who else? Corpus press, trying to think, uh, dark fuse was one before they went under. Um, thunderstorm books is a small press, but they're just, they only do limited. Um, just anyways, if you know more small presses, leave them down there. They're a dime a dozen these days and the good ones are extremely hard to find. One of the new ones that I'm watching right now is flametree press. Um, so, uh, if you guys have heard of them, they've been doing it, they've been doing a great job with marketing. They have audio books, paperbacks, hard covers. It's really professional looking. I haven't read any of those books yet, so I can't tell you the quality of the editing, but, uh, going into, so the, so going back to independent, if you're an indie, it's a very expensive process. It can be frustrating. Um, fatigue can set in very easily, um, because you're having to do everything yourself. So if you want to move on from that and you don't want to put any of your own money into it, you want to move on to small press. Um, I do not suggest, I said I wasn't going to suggest, uh, anything at all as far as what you should go with, but right now I don't know of a single small press that either isn't struggling or isn't hot garbage in the area of either book covers or editing. It seems like every single small press out right now has a problem, like sinister grin, terrific, gorgeous covers. Editing is complete garbage. Um, anytime I've picked up a sinister grin book and opened it up, the editing is just terrible. Um, and then you have, uh, Deadite and Eraserhead Press, especially Eraserhead Press, their covers are terrible. Um, I haven't even picked them up to see if their editing is any good because their covers are so terrible. Um, and then you have other ones that I haven't read, like Kraken Press, their covers are amazing. I haven't got a chance to read any of their books yet. Um, Thunderstorm Books is great, but they're only limited edition stuff. Um, so, and you also have to be invited to, uh, submit. Uh, but what's where small presses come in is they pay for formatting, editing, cover art. If any publisher ever wants you to buy your own of anything, if they want you to pay for anything, run for the hills. That's not the role of a publisher is to invest in you as an author and to pay for these things themselves. If they want any money from you, they're not a publisher. They're a vanity press. Uh, next, uh, so the cons would be for the small presses, like I said, the, uh, well, I haven't said this yet, but limited marketing budget. Um, you're going to see a lot of social media. You're going to see a lot of free promotion from small presses and not much else. You're going to see a lot of, uh, they're going to reach out to Instagrammers and, uh, big Twitter accounts, things like that to try and boost the signal, but you're going to see very little as far as like bookbub ads or, um, any kind of ads period. They'll do giveaways and that is kind of paid, paid promotion because they have to buy the books to send to people unless they're ebooks and then, you know, you're getting off free. Also, you're dealing with, and this is a big one right now, the lack of stability. Dark Fuse Press has gone under. Um, they famously went under because they just didn't pay anybody the last six months they were open. Um, went bankrupt and everybody lost their shirt. Um, myself included. I have, sorry to get my armpit meat all up in your face, but this was my release with them. That's a, let's say Dark Fuse on it. This is Fairy Lights, of course, out of print because they went under, but uh, so I had to deal with that. Sam Hain, um, went under, Apex went under. I think Journalstone bought most or acquired most of their stuff. Um, they just, they don't last. Uh, they, the best ones last about 10 years and then they just fall off the map, whether it be because they can't pay their people or because people just aren't buying the work period. Um, you know, either way. So you're dealing with a lack of stability that you're not going to have as much of a problem with if you go to a legacy publisher. Um, another thing with a small press is people still see it as independent publishing. Unfortunately it is not. Um, no matter how great the small press is, if they are paying for everything, if they're paying for cover work, formatting, editing, all that stuff, they are a publisher. This is not independent publishing. Um, even if they run Kickstarter's and all that stuff, it's not considered independent publishing because they are not the ones writing it. If they were the ones writing it and publishing, that would be independent. But, uh, small presses are right there in the middle. Uh, basically you're taking a gamble, you're keeping more of your rights, you're, you're having more input in the process. That's another big thing. Um, with independent publishing, you have all the input. You know, you can decide the cover, you can decide all that. But with a small press, you get a little less input. Um, but you still get a lot of input. Now, if you go to a legacy publisher, that's where you start losing rights and things along those lines. But the, the pros, again, is no out-of-pocket fees for a legacy publisher. Massive marketing capabilities, they, they will throw whole marketing budgets into Trump because they want to make their money back. Um, either your advance or their money for the marketing, the making of the actual book. Um, you also get your books in chain bookstores like, uh, Barnes and Noble, on-site kind of deal, books a million. You can also maybe possibly, if you get big enough, you get your, your books in Walmart kind of thing. Um, but you do lose the input. Um, you do lose your rights. Um, you do have, you, they can change your work. A lot of publishing contracts come with, um, clauses that say, you know, they can change without your permission, something in the book. Um, and that's a big, uh, no, no for me. In fact, when I did my, my legacy publishing, when I went that route, um, and still am under a different name, I made sure that in my contract, that stipulation was not in there. I have final control over what goes in the book. Um, and then they said, you know, you don't have any input on covers. Also, you're going to need some patience. I think that's the biggest problem right now is people lack the patience to actually query and submit and wait and find an agent. You're also going to need an agent, which is, you don't need for, uh, small press and the indie, you're going to need an agent because, uh, legacy publishers don't take unsolicited material. I think that's everything. Uh, if you have any questions down there, um, other than who my publishers are, um, or, you know, are my publishers, and I get that quite a, quite a bit as soon as I mentioned, you know, I'm with this public, Hey, can you, can you get me in the back door? No, I don't want to get you in the back door. Anyways, but I can't help you get published. You got to do this stuff on your own, but hopefully this list will let you know, will let you see the differences. Um, basically the farther up the chain you go, the more you're losing, but you're gaining convenience and accessibility. That's basically it. So if you have any questions, leave them down there in the doobly-doo. But until next time, I have been E, you have been U, this has been from the desk, and I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye.