'Cause I'm not a liar, maybe a storyteller

If there's one thing I know more than random band facts, it's how the publishing world works. I've been trying to enter this world since I was 14 years old, every time ending with the same crushing defeat as the last and a vow that the next time would turn out better. The next time would come around and I would state, "This is the one! I just know it!" and guess what. It wasn't, it never was. Eventually the surprise wears off and you learn to be humble and accept the rejections without much thought. Or a lot of the same thoughts: It's not good enough anyway. Who would want to read this, anyway? Why did I even bother, anyway?

But you learn that doesn't define you either. The no's are just pushing you toward yes's. It might take forever, but one day you'll get there. At least, that's what I tell myself. I can be stubborn when I want to be.

This post is going to be all about the different types of publishers and what I've personally been involved in with each. How they work, the process it usually takes, and what it means to be apart of them.

*disclaimer* This is all just from my experience in this field, some people probably have way more success stories and others have had it a lot worse. I just want to share what I've learned.

As far as I know, there's 3 different main types of literary publishing:

• Traditional publishing houses 
• Hybrid publishers
• Self publishing 

We'll start from the top: 

Traditional Publishing

This is what most people think of when they think of literary publishing. There's 5 main houses, otherwise known as the Big 5:

1. Hachette Book Group
2. HarperCollins
3. Macmillan
4. Penguin Random House
5. Simon and Schuster

Harper and Penguin are both big for the genre I tend to write in, Young Adult Fiction. If you pick up a book from the teen section of Books-A-Million, it's probably from one of these two houses. They're my ultimate goal for notoriety's sake. 

Originally, when I first started trying to get books out there, traditional publishing was all you really saw. These houses tend to require you to have a literary agent that they will work with you through and don't want to deal directly with authors. Because of this, all of my experience with this branch is with literary agents. 

To score an agent, you really have to be good at selling yourself as much as your story. I'm not good at this part. Summarizing a book in a way that sounds appealing and grabs a reader's attention without giving away too much of the plot is really, really difficult to me. However, you have to pitch yourself constantly to try to win over an agent. Most require a cover letter (I'm worse at those), a query letter, and anywhere between the first 10 pages to the first 3 chapters of your work. The ones that want 10 pages are very set in their belief that if they aren't captured within that bit of your work, then they won't accept you. The query letter is where you have to give a brief bio of why you'd be a good fit and any experience or accomplishments that are relevant to the industry. After that, you pitch your book: the hook, your main characters, the end goal, your genre, your word count, your target audience. There's more that I'm probably forgetting, but that's the main point. For all agents that I've seen, you email all of these things to the specific agent you're contacting and then wait anywhere from 3-12 weeks depending on the agency. After the wait period, you either get nothing and assume they didn't want you, get a generic email of "Thanks for submitting! However, we don't feel you'd be a good fit for our company," or you get a request for the full manuscript. Also-one of the most frustrating things about agents and traditional publishing houses in general is that they want you to have experience in the field already. You can't really get into the industry without already having published work, but you can't publish work without someone giving you a chance and they won't give you a chance if you don't have published work. Makes sense, right?

Out of all the query letters I've sent and agents I've pitched to, I had two requests for a full manuscript. I think it was one per book that I've tried to publish, but they may have both been for the first one, I can't remember exactly. Regardless, both times the agents have said they really liked what they read and wanted to see the rest. I emailed the full manuscript and my hopes skyrocketed as I thought surely this would work out and I would have an agent by the end of the year. Both times after a couple months, I received an update that while they really liked my story and would like to work with me, they simply did not have the time to dedicate to another author. Looking back now, that sounds like such a bogus excuse used to placate me. Why go through the trouble of requesting a whole novel if you knew you were already swamped? Whatever, the moral of the story is I ended up not making it with an agency.

Literary agents are just one thing that defines traditional publishing. The biggest thing, in my head at least, is that if you get in to this side, you have to give up your rights to your book. It's appealing because once your book is in the hands of one of these big publishing houses, that's it. Your part is done and the only thing left (if your lucky) is signing approvals for covers and designs. They have editors on hand, they do all the marketing and distribution of your book, they put it out there in store. You don't have to worry about a thing, but to get this you have to give up the copy rights and that can feel demeaning. You put months, maybe even years, into working on this and then suddenly it's not even technically yours anymore. It can be worth it, but that means movie deals and TV deals and translations can be created all without you ever wanting them to. You don't get to make the decisions legally anymore.

Also with traditional publishing, you typically get an advance (which is really them buying the rights) off what they think you're worth. From what I know, it's what they estimate your sales will make. However, you pay this back over time via royalties. You get a pretty small percentage and the publisher gets the vast majority of it. That's how they pay for all the printing and editors and their name that you get by being apart of it so that you don't have to pay them out of pocket. 

There's pros and cons, just like anything. I still want to go the traditional route, just for myself to feel like I've truly succeeded at getting into one of the Big 5. It's scary, but I think it's worth it. There's not much money in it unless you're the next John Green or J.K. Rowling, but I'm not doing this for the money anyway. It'd be cool to be that famous, but I just want to share the worlds I create with everyone else and I think traditional publishing is the best way for that.

Next up:

Hybrid Publishing 

I've been involved with 2 different hybrid publishing companies, both of which I will not name because I have a lot of complaints about them.

Let's start with what makes it different from traditional before I sit here and rant for an hour:

Unlike traditional publishing houses, every hybrid publisher that I've seen hasn't required an agent and readily accepts new authors with no previous experience. It's cool, but can also set you up to get involved in something you don't want to be involved with since you don't know what you're doing and you're looking at contracts yourself instead of a professional looking at them for you. They use jargon that can go over any individual's head who isn't educated in the field and next thing you know you're committed to this one publisher for the rest of your life. They also tend to have a submission section setup within their website instead of emailing them which is really convenient.

The thing that makes hybrid publishing a "hybrid" is that it's a combination of self-publishing and traditional. You get the major perk of keeping your rights to your book and they still handle all the marketing and distribution and editing, BUT you have to pay them upfront for their services and they're sneaky about that.

The one true hybrid publisher I dealt with seemed great at first. The man I spoke to was super friendly and acted like he genuinely cared about my book. I was 20 and a junior at UM, so when the guy wanted to set up a phone interview I had the great idea to do it on my hour break between classes. So, there I was pacing around the patio of Java City on the phone while this man crushed my dreams again. He told me they wanted to represent my book, they loved it and thought it had a lot of potential to be something. He kept dishing out compliments and I ate it right up. Then he switched gears; he told me that while he really liked Battle Scars, it would need a lot of "cleaning up" for the company to accept it. He said the owner wanted all books under his umbrella to be "clean" enough for his children to read. I thought, okay there's some language in it that's unnecessary, so I could live with that. And then he goes, "It'll be $2500 once you sign the contract I'll be emailing you." And I froze. Nowhere on the website had I seen anything about a fee or needing to pay for services or anything. That's why I had submitted to them in the first place. That's when I really learned what hybrid publishing meant. I told him I wasn't sure how I could possibly pay that, I was a full time student without a job, and his response was, "Well, do you have any family who could?" I knew I didn't, but I'm afraid of saying no and told him I would see what I could do and let him know. Of course, I didn't end up with that company.

The other one was the publisher I talked about in "Publishers Suck and Here's Why." The one ran by the mafia. The one that told me they'd get me on Ellen and make trading cards to go with Battle Scars. The one that thankfully I was broken in a boot and Katy had to drive me to the meeting with them  and popped my little naive bubble so I didn't agree to work with them. They had two options: traditional where they had the rights or a more hybrid route where you kept your rights and they did all the work. Along with all the other sketchy things the mafia did, they wouldn't answer my questions about how their process actually worked and instead would just respond with a list of questions of their own regarding what I wanted to accomplish with my life or something along the lines.

Needless to say, I have a pretty low opinion of hybrid publishing thanks to some not-so-great experiences.

And last:

Self Publishing

This is ultimately what I ended up doing with Battle Scars. It's pretty self explanatory: Ya do it all yourself.

There's different avenues you can take when publishing your own book: doing everything on your own and selling them out of the back of your car (congrats if you have the money for that) or going through a sort of parent company to handle all the printing and binding and fun stuff. These companies allow you to use their resources and publish through them without having to sell your soul to a Crossroads Demon and sign the contract in blood.

The two companies I know for sure are BAM! Publishing and Kindle Direct Publishing. BAM! Is Books-A-Million's branch where you can upload and format the book and they publish it for you. When I looked into them, you had to pay a fee of I think around $300 to use their services that included editing, so I didn't go through them. KDP is through Amazon-it used to be CreateSpace and KDP but they combined late last year. They're who I used to publish Battle Scars.

Their system is pretty straight forward. You have the option of going the free route where you do all the work yourself including editing and promoting and cover design, or you can pay for varying levels that include these things as well as marketing tips. Ya girl is broke, so I went for the free option where you just upload your file based on the format recommended by KDP and design the size, style of cover (matte or gloss, black and white or colored), and can either use a basic cover maker they offer or upload one on your own. I'm lucky enough to have some really talented friends and ended up commissioning a piece from my sweet friend Anna that is the cover you now see for Battle Scars. She did amazing. After everything is uploaded and designed, you order a proof copy to make sure the product meets your standard then you can either edit it or finalize it and release it to the world. Not only does KDP do physical prints, but they also do e-books and you just have to convert the file. It's all super easy. 

Royalties depend on the level you decide to go into. Free gets the smallest amount since you aren't paying for any services out of pocket, but it's still way more than you typically get for book sales. I think I get 40% and Amazon gets 60% if I remember right. You get a bit more for the other levels but I don't know the details of those.

That's pretty much all I know for self-publishing. The hardest part is promoting, as I said earlier I'm horrible at selling myself. I feel annoying posting about my book, but I really appreciate any interest in it and will tell people about it. Occasionally, I have physical copies in my parents' shop and that's pretty cool.

In conclusion, I would recommend traditional publishing if you're able to break into that world or self-publishing if you're wanting to just get out to the public and willing to put in the extra work. Self can be expensive if you get really invested in it and do it well (aka better than me). I have a bad taste for hybrids, but I'm sure there's some out there that are genuine. It takes a lot of research and dedication and tears if you're like me, but one day it might be worth it.

That's all I got. Thanks for reading this mess.