I\u2019m afraid that when I tell you what I am about to tell you, you\u2019ll either be offended or think I\u2019m a jerk.<\/p>\n
But, because I always tell you the complete and unvarnished truth about the subjects we discuss, I\u2019m going to go ahead and tell you anyway.<\/p>\n
So here it goes: for more years than I can count, I secretly looked down upon people who self-published their books.<\/p>\n
I was a mainstream book publishing elitist and snob.<\/p>\n
Before you start throwing rotten tomatoes at me or call me a philistine, remember that I grew up in the traditional book publishing world \u2026 and so that was what I knew and loved.<\/p>\n
If I had self-published my first book, I might well have become a self-publishing cheerleader.<\/p>\n
But as it happened, when I wrote my first book proposal in 1981, the first agent I took it to agreed to represent it \u2026 and the first publisher he showed it to, McGraw-Hill, bought it for an $8,500 advance (and it was a short book).<\/p>\n
For all my books since then \u2026 more than 80 to date \u2026 I have had them published by mainstream publishing houses including John Wiley & Sons, HarperCollins, Henry Holt, Prentice Hall, and New American Library.<\/p>\n
I always preferred traditional publishing to self-publishing for these reasons:<\/p>\n
1\u2014It was a lot less work. I only had to write the book. The publisher took care of designing, printing, storing, shipping, and selling it.<\/p>\n
2\u2014It cost me nothing out of pocket. And it paid me immediate income \u2013 an advance \u2013 even before the book was published.<\/p>\n
3\u2014There was much more prestige in those days being published by a \u201creal\u201d publishing house than by having it printed at your own expense.<\/p>\n
At least one famous self-publishing guru disputes me on this. He says: \u201cThe reader doesn\u2019t look to see or care about who published the book; he only cares who the author is and what the book is about.\u201d<\/p>\n
From years of personal experience, I can tell you flat-out that this isn\u2019t true — and people are more impressed when you are published by a traditional publisher \u2026 regardless of whether they should be.<\/p>\n
Once, when I was giving a speaking engagement, one of the attendees volunteered to chauffer me from the airport to the convention center \u2013 because, he told me, doing so would give him some private time with me.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo you\u2019ve written 35 books?\u201d he asked me. \u201cYep,\u201d I replied.<\/p>\n
\u201cSelf-published them, I suppose,\u201d he said lightly, but I could hear the undertone of something like mockery or mild denigration in his voice.<\/p>\n
\u201cNope,\u201d I snapped backed proudly and confidently. \u201cMy publishers are McGraw-Hill, Prentice Hall, and Wiley.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked at me with newfound respect, and the only reason was that in his eyes I was now a \u201creal\u201d author instead of a guy that paid to have his scribbling printed and bound.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m afraid that when I tell you what I am about to tell you, you\u2019ll either be offended or think I\u2019m a jerk. But, because I always tell you the complete and unvarnished truth about the subjects we discuss, I\u2019m going to go ahead and tell you anyway. So here it goes: for more years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=926"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":928,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926\/revisions\/928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}