Your publisher doesn’t care

Face it. Your publisher doesn’t care about you.

You have an incredible idea that will change the world. Your publisher doesn’t care.

You can write with such deftness and skill that readers will be captivated. Your publisher doesn’t care.

You’ve conducted three years of painstaking research. They don’t care.

You have incredible ideas on how to promote your book. Not impressed.

You’re the world’s foremost expert in an area that’s poorly understood, and you’re read to explain your insights to the world. So what?

What your publisher cares about

Your publisher cares about book sales. They make money when your book sells. The amount of money they make is proportional to how many books (and ebooks and audiobooks) are sold.

A book that is successful within a perfectly defined, narrow segment may be fantastic for your career, but if the segment doesn’t buy many books, your success is irrelevant. On the publisher’s balance sheet, it’s a failure.

A fantastic book that sells poorly is a failure. A crappy book that sells extremely well is a success. That’s publishing.

If this attitude upsets you, don’t seek a traditional publisher.

On the other hand, if you do want a traditional publisher, you have work to do.

You need to show in your book proposal how you will translate your ideas into book sales.

That could be with some combination of a mailing list, a newsletter, a social media following, a speaking schedule, an influential academic teaching role, a podcast, a publicist placing your ideas in media slots, or an enthusiastic, well-connected launch team. The more of those tools you are already using, the more convincing you can be. If your ideas are cool plans you hope to execute, the pitch will be far less effective.

Publishers used to take a chance on a lot of books hoping that some would “pop” due to some indefinable combination of timeliness, viral ideas, author’s charisma, luck, and Oprah. Some books still get contracts this way, but a lot fewer — and those that do get such contracts end up with low advances, crappy royalty splits, and weak support from publishers’ overworked editorial and publicity teams.

There is an out: hybrid publishers

A lot of my clients continue to pursue traditional publishers. I help them craft book proposals. It’s not cheap. And the results are not certain, either (although I’ve had a few recent successes — hope springs eternal).

Other clients have chosen the hybrid publishing route. They’re paying tens of thousands of dollars to get their books published.

The interesting difference here is: hybrid publishers like Amplify, Ideapress, Greenleaf, Racket, and Page Two do care. It’s not because they’re nice people (although, by and large, they are). It’s because you pay them to care. Since you are the customer, their success comes from making you happy, not just from book sales.

It’s quite possible to work with a hybrid, get your book out, sell few copies, and have zero impact on your own success. After all, you still need to do the work of writing and promoting a great book. When this happens, the traditional publishers that turned your vision down will say “See, we were right. This book wasn’t worth investing in. You weren’t worth investing in.”

But it’s also possible to succeed with a hybrid published book in ways that traditional publishers wouldn’t call success. Among hybrid-published books, 53% generate a gross profit, accounting for all costs and all revenues (speaking, consulting, workshops, business leads, and so on). This is true even though the median hybrid-published book sells only 1,600 copies. What matters is who buys those copies and what how they influence those readers. The author cares about those readers. The publisher only cares how many of them there are.

What does this mean? If you are pining for a traditional publisher, just realize that they may love your book, but they don’t really care about you. That can still be a good partnership, so long as you realize how it works — and assuming your finances don’t support an investment in paying a hybrid. Just don’t get mad when you realize your publisher doesn’t care.