A friend came to me furious because, unlike her colleagues’ publishers, the company that produced her book wasn’t arranging a launch party or media interviews. I thought that her book had been beautifully edited and produced (very quickly because the subject was time-sensitive), and that she had paid a very modest fee to have this done.
“Did you agree that they would handle promotion and marketing?” I asked. The question didn’t register. She’d arranged to have the book “published” and to her that meant everything she saw happen with other people’s books. She didn’t know that her colleagues’ parties and media tours were probably being paid for by them or their organizations, rather than by the publisher. She simply wanted what everyone else got.
Another friend told me about getting his books “published” by a very nice company and that he was hoping to raise enough money to publish a few more. Thanks to someone he knew, the books were being carried at this and that local bookstore, and he hoped there would be more if his coauthors could find time to visit more stores.
“Doesn’t the company you used provide distribution?” I asked. He didn’t know. “You can buy an ISBN for $100 and I did that. And they can get the book on Amazon, too.”
If you are not a publishing professional, you may wonder what the connection is between those two stories. If you are, you’ll know that these are stories that show how little even highly educated, literate people know about publishing.
The following notes apply to self-publishing, a booming industry, as well as to “hybrid” and “custom” publishing, as well as to what we generally call “traditional publishing” (with agents and advances, at companies with many different departments)
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