New and potential clients often ask me whether they should publish traditionally, ie through a publishing company, or Indie, ie do it all themselves including the production and marketing of their book. 

Over the next two episodes I’m going to give you the pros and cons of both, and today I’ll talk about traditional publishing.

Pros

• Prestige — there’s no doubt that having your book published by a major publishing house like MacMillan or Penguin carries more prestige than one you have published yourself. 
• I can’t think of any more

Cons

• It’s virtually impossible to get a book deal with a publisher without an agent, so you have to start with that.
• It’s more difficult than ever to get an agent these days, and it can take a long time. You have to write a detailed proposal to sell your book idea, and that can take longer than writing the actual book. 
• Even if you’re lucky enough to get an agent, they then have to try to sell your book to a publisher, which is hard when you are a first time author.
• Even if you get a publishing contract, it will take at least two years for your book to hit the bookstores. If you are a speaker and want to sell your book at the back of the room, that’s way too long to wait.
• The publisher has total control over your book title, cover and even the content. 
• You will be lucky to get a 10% royalty on sales, and that’s 10% of the NET selling price.
• You may have heard of authors receiving big advances, so let me explain that to you. This money is an advance against royalties, so if you get, say, a $10,000 advance, any royalties your book earns will be set against that amount until you have earned it back. Only after you’ve had $10,000 in royalties will you see any more money. The sad truth is that you are highly unlikely to get an advance of any kind as a new author, and even if you do, you probably won’t even earn back the royalties. The reason for that is my last point in this list.
• Unless you are already a best selling, well known author, publishing companies will invest very little in promoting your book. The marketing and selling of your book still depends almost entirely on you, and in fact some publishing companies insist their authors have some sort of platform that will help them bring in sales — such as professional speaking.

So all in all, the picture for new authors trying to publish traditionally looks quite bleak. That’s why I come down solidly on the side of Indie publishing, and I’ll tell you why in next week’s episode.