Publishers don’t want your promotional efforts on your self-published books to eclipse their promotions on your contracted books. Publishers are rightfully concerned that your efforts in self-publishing will take away from your ability to give your best to the books you’ve contracted with them. This includes taking the time to write the best book you can, and it also means spending some time on the marketing of your book. When a publisher contracts with you, they’re not only buying the rights to your books, they’re expecting you to devote the proper amount of time to the whole endeavor. If the quality of the self-published effort is lacking in any way, it can reflect poorly on the publisher and it can lead to lost readers, not just on the self-pub books but also on the trad-pub ones. It’s risky for them when an author self-publishes and leaves the publisher without the ability to ensure a certain level of quality. They also have expensive, experienced designers for your cover as well as the interior design of the book. Publishers spend considerable money on several rounds of editing, copyediting, and typesetting. This can not only reflect negatively on them, it can create confusion in the reader (who sees different kinds of books with your name on them) which can lead to lower sales. If you self-publish, they lose their ability to have input into the quality of your work, or the branding. The publisher is working hard to position you in the market a certain way, and to maintain a level of quality for which they want you (and themselves) to be known. Here are just a few considerations, from the publisher’s perspective: 1. If you are contracted with a traditional publisher, you may have restrictions on your ability to self-publish “on the side.” And this is not because publishers are overly possessive, or “dinosaurs,” or “just don’t get it.” It’s because they have an investment to protect, and it’s their responsibility to ensure nothing you do will interfere with the saleability of the brand they’re building (you).
#Mypublisher customer service full
More books in the marketplace might mean more money in your pocket, but it also means less time available to pay attention to high quality writing, and less time available for giving each book the full weight of your marketing efforts. More importantly, different things will work for different people. We are in a long, slow transition period of our industry, in which people are experimenting with different ways of doing business. I am not sure what makes people think “the time is now” as if we are in some kind of awesome bubble that is going to burst soon. As one author put it, “It seems like the time is now! It’s time to be prolific!” These days, I’m sensing that many authors are gung-ho to write and publish as much as possible. Now that the term “hybrid author” has been coined, referring to those who are both traditionally and self-published, everyone thinks they want or need to be one.
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