The below advice was to an Aspiring Author on Facebook, who wondered whether to go traditional or self published. I put the naivety aside, you don’t choose, the industry does, and gave it my best effort. The Aspiring Author must have been “attacked” by Trolls, a sad reality in today’s “cancel culture of cowards”, because the post was pulled before my response uploaded. Since, I put a few minutes into the effort, I decided to post it on my site. Here it is, unedited, down and dirty advice, to any aspiring author.

Leland Shanle I’ve traditionally, self, and hybrid published. I’ve gone the agent route and currently have a contract with a producer. I have been doing this for a couple decades now. Traditionally: the only money you will get is from the initial advance. Yes, it’s nice to have the gravitas of being a “published author”. But, the reality is YOU will have to push/market/etc your own book unless it goes “viral” or you are famous, you will get little to no support. Self: it’s a lot of work (one-man-band) and the reality is the product suffers. Hybrid (buying services of traditional publisher but maintaining all rights): you get a good product and keep your rights and any money produced by your work. The KEY is a top notch editor, formatter and cover designer. You may not be able to judge a book by its cover…but readers will buy it based on its cover. So? Long post already, sorry, it depends on what YOU want. Yea, I know BS response, but it is true. For example: are you in, or are you seeking a position in academia? If yes, then you need to go traditional. Old school. Good luck going traditional, its damn hard competing with dead authors who pump more books out post mortem in a year than they did over their entire “alive writing” career. I don’t recommend Self, again, the product suffers, its a ton of work, and once its “out there” you can’t take it back. Hybrid used to be the route to go IMO. I say used to be, because the entire publishing scene has changed. Hybrid worked for me 10 years ago because you got the editing, formatting, cover design, etc. of professionals. The product was the same quality as traditional and you kept all the rights and money produced by your work. So how has publishing changed? For starters, anyone can publish anything, regardless of quality. Millions, and MILLIONS of books get dumped on the market every year. Readers have to sort thru so much chaff many have gone back to traditional only, using it as a quality screen, again IMO. The evidence is anecdotal, but by monitoring the NYT BSL you can see that Indy or Hybrid books rarely penetrate the top 100. Just a few short years ago it seemed 40% of the list consistently were “Self or Hybrid”. Traditional publishers were slow to the ebook phenomenon. But, have since come back with a vengeance. Amazon won the war of the book stores. The 4 Publishers (they hide how consolidated the industry is by keeping the old House names as divisions) are clearly dominating the ebook field of battle as they do the hard copy. Agents? “You have to be published to get an agent; you can’t get published until you have an agent…” An obvious problem. NEVER pay an Agent! EVER! That’s the end of agent advice, I’ve had a couple and never got any results. Pretty depressing, sorry, its reality. What can you do? How can you compete with dead authors, a fixed market, and an endless dump of books, thousands a day? Well, you can sell your soul…I mean rights and go traditional. NOT EASY. Prepare for mass rejection and if you do score, get a big advance, biggest possible. Do NOT think taking a small one or not at all will endear you to the House. It will only mean they put less effort into your book because they have invested very little. Hybrid: it still is all about the marketing. Get a website, in the author’s name, get a hard ass editor who will call shit, shit. An anal formatter and a good cover artist. Then start pumping out books. You will have to build your own readership. Book bub, Amazon Prime, etc.will help. And, an email list. It can be quite disheartening, sorry for the reality check. My last couple of books, my publisher (we have since parted company) and I thought were my best work. Unfortunately, all the factors listed above have made them only one tenth as successful as my first three (financially). I’ve been on a year long self-sabbatical trying to figure out my next move. I re-vamped my website (another disaster story) and have tried to start writing again. It is addictive…

Leland