My experiment to compare samples of self-published and professionally-published novels produced some interesting results, surprising in some respects, while predictable in others.
I expected that some of the self-published books would be good, but I didn’t expect that they would be as good as they were. Although, of the 12 samples I read, the three I liked least were by independent authors, two of the four books that I bought were also self-published. I would struggle to choose a favourite between Booker shortlisted Room and two self-published novels, Remix and The Girl on the Swing. Patsy Whyte’s independently published No Easy Road was also of a high standard, though not something I would normally read.
If this had been a blind test, I’m not sure I would have been able to pick out the six self-published books from the samples. Immortal, Elfhunter and No Cure for the Broken-Hearted would have marked themselves out as self-published due to the quality control issues I mentioned in my previous post, while I think I would have been certain that Parrot & Olivier, C and The Long Song were professionally published as they are written with a confident and sophisticated style that is usually only seen in authors of great experience.
As for the rest, I’m not so sure. I think I would have thought that In a Strange Room was self-published (something in the style and content reminded me of work from a creative writing class), but that No Easy Road was professionally published, due to the current craze for misery memoirs and Patsy Whyte’s assured writing style.
Categorising the remaining four – Room, Remix, The Girl on the Swing and Booker winner The Finkler Question – would have been more complicated. I don’t think any of them would have screamed ‘self-published’. Based on my pre-conceptions, I suspect that the originality of Room and Remix would have suggested to me that they were by relatively new writers and were therefore more likely to be self-published, leaving The Finkler Question and The Girl on the Swing for the professionally published pile. I suspect that it would have been even more difficult to distinguish between them if I’d chosen samples of six random bestsellers, rather than six prize nominees.
In the future, I’m certain that the number of quality self-published books will grow. The Kindle and its rival e-readers have made publishing more accessible than ever before as they have taken away the cost and logistics barriers of traditional print publishing. This has great potential for many types of writers who might otherwise not have made it to the shelves: unfashionable authors, self-conscious authors who can’t face the pile of rejections that have to be surmounted to get published in the traditional way, professionally published authors whose back catalogue is languishing out of print, and authors who have recognised this as a viable alternative business model.
In a post on her blog, The Girl on the Swing author Ali Cooper explains that “I hadn't tried very hard with the agent/publisher route. But what I had done was to keep a careful watch on other authors for the past couple of years. I noted who was signing publishing contracts, in what genres etc, and I decided that in my genre, in UK plus a number of other factors, it wasn't going to happen.” She adds that she is sure that she could have got published by a new or small press but “decided I was better off being indie”.
There’s a similar story from Remix author, Lexi Revellian. “I spent a year submitting Remix,” she told blogger Simon Royle in November. “Four agents requested the full typescript; two of them approached me. I was told I write brilliantly. Two said they would like to see my next book. They said Remix did not fit their list, they did not believe they could sell it to publishers, even that books about rock stars never sold. I decided a year was long enough.”
Remix has since sold 15,000 copies in six months and is a constant feature in Amazon’s Top 100 e-books list. In publishing terms that is a significant impact.
Compare Remix’s sales to those of the 2007 Booker shortlist. According to the Telegraph, in the run-up to the announcement of the winner, Anne Enright’s The Gathering, the entire six-book shortlist had sold only 120,770 copies between them. A staggering 110,615 of the sales were of Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach, with the remaining five titles mustering just 10,155 between them. Indra Sinha's Animal’s People managed only 1,189 sales (a mere 231 of these before it got the publicity of making the shortlist). In contrast, Katie Price’s latest novel at the time, Crystal, had sold 159,407 copies – more than the entire Booker shortlist put together.
The statistics may seem galling, but self-published novelists should definitely take heart in the fact that a novel like Remix can manage as much as a tenth of the sales of a novel from the Katie Price marketing operation with its position on supermarket sales stands and promotion through TV and magazines.
Self-publishers who rant about celebrity books damaging their own chances of getting professionally published are way off the mark. I’ve seen a lot of this kind of talk on forums and it completely flies in the face of publishing economics. Publishers who make a fortune from celebrity bestsellers are in a far better position to take risks over new writers than publishers who must play it safe because they are struggling financially. Neither is Katie Price taking thousands of readers away from other books. Most of them I’m sure read Crystal and the rest of her portfolio because they are buying into the Katie Price brand, not because they are desperate for something to read. Very few of those 159,407 readers would ever consider reading Animal’s People.
Given the relatively small sales figures of even some of the most acclaimed novels, does this mean that it’s better for a new author to go it alone? Perhaps. An author who gets a royalty of 20% of the sale price of a £6.99 professionally-published novel will end up with £1.38 per book sold. And that’s quite a good deal. It’s more common for authors to receive 20% after costs are deducted, or even just 10%. Usually it’s necessary for an author to hire an agent to find a publisher for them, meaning that the agent’s cut will reduce that further.
In contrast Amazon’s digital text platform gives authors a royalty of 70% of the sale price. On a £1.99 self-published book that’s £1.39 per sale, 1p more than through the professional publishing route and with no agent to take a fee.
So what advantages are there for an author who gets published professionally? The obvious one is with printed books. A publisher will carry the costs and spend the time necessary to get a printed book to the shelves. But as digital books become the dominant form over the next few years, where will this leave the publishing industry?
Professional publishers will generally still be able to offer authors a better marketing platform than they can create themselves. This is not just in forms of traditional advertising (which is nowhere near as common in book publishing as it is for products such as DVDs or music CDs), but also in the relationships they have with newspaper arts sections and booksellers.
But this offering can vary between publishers. One author who had her first novel published by a small press told me that she was expected to do most of the marketing work herself and had to present the publisher with samples of press coverage before they would agree to a second print run.
However, the bigger publishers will almost always be able to market a novel better than the author can alone. Another advantage of being professionally published is that many book awards won’t accept entries from self-published novelists. This covers a range of awards from small prizes up to and including the Booker itself and to some extent I can see their point. It’s not worth the judges’ time to be deluged by self-published titles whose only qualification may be that the author thinks that they’re in with a chance. Perhaps in future literary prizes should consider approaching an authors association and ask it to put forward two self-published titles in the same way that each publisher is only allowed to submit two titles. This would give the best self-published titles an equal chance.
Another disadvantage that self-publishers face is that the major newspapers rarely, if ever, review or even mention self-published titles. However, this may become less of an issue as we journey deeper into the digital age. “Is the age of the critic over?”, the Observer asked in January, citing the rise of social media as a crucial factor in how consumers make choices. “Every single literary critic in the traditional media seemed to agree that Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, his saga of a dysfunctional American family, was the novel of the epoch,” the article said. “Despite the deafening ballyhoo, the critical consensus didn't seem to make much difference to the larger public.”
So with the fickle and unpredictable public in the driving seat the traditional publishers may find that the e-book revolution wears away their business model in more ways than one. I don’t think it will be long before a self-published author with a great novel and really good self-promotion skills comes along and then there will be no looking back.
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