Not exact matches
But I think part of the motivation for this piece was frustration in the indie author community
at the fact that many of the best ones
get signed up by
traditional houses, who view indie
publishing as a farm system, and very few established authors will actually turn down an advance to go indie.
What many aspiring authors don't know is that (1) the shelf - life of new books in brick and mortar bookstores is 2 - 6 weeks; (2)
traditional authors
get 8 - 15 % royalties vs. 70 % royalties for those self -
published; (3) almost 30 % of hardcover and paperbacks end up in landfills; (4) the timeframe between book contract to actual publication
at traditional houses is 18 - 24 months; and (5) agents are rarely interested in authors who only have one book up their sleeves.
Hiring these pros isn't cheap, but your reputation as a novelist is
at stake, and you might improve your chances of
getting published by a
traditional house.
If you want your book to be
published by a
traditional publishing house, it is much, much harder to
get an editor to look
at your book proposal or manuscript if you don't have an agent.
I've felt for a long time that if Amazon
got their act together by offering Kindles
at a lower price point (which hasn't happened yet, but must be on the horizon), they could easily position themselves to dominate the industry, effectively cutting out
traditional publishing houses.