15 Things Traditional Publishers Might Say To Each Other About Self-Publishing Service Providers

trad-to-trad

1.  “Look, we’ve nothing to worry about. They’re all just glorified printers and author mills. We’re the real cultivators and promoters of literature.”
 
2.  “I mean, it’s easy to make money if you just sell services to authors and not their books.”
 
3.  “Martha, it’s like I said about e-books years ago. Those service providers will disappear in a few years time. Mark my words.”
 
4.  “We all know they’re just a bunch of new breed vanity houses with their POD’s and their PDQ’s.”
 
5.  “I just wish no one had invented POD or the internet. At least back then we knew where we stood.”
 
6.  “Actually, Frank, we’re thinking of setting up a self-publishing imprint. We think we can do it better than any of those provider services.”
 
7.  “No, listen. Seriously. If we set up a self-publishing imprint, we could use it like a market tester and a talent feeder. It could be the solution to all our problems.”
 
8.  “Why should we take all the risk, bear all the costs, when all those service providers get away with it for nothing?”
 
9.  “If we all operated without gatekeepers, there would be anarchy! I mean people would just stop buying and reading books altogether.”
 
10. “It’s all about protecting the book market. Services providers working with authors don’t value books the way we do.”
 
11. “Young authors should know their place. They all think the best part of writing is signing the check before sending it off to a vanity house. In my day, Frank, authors were happy just to have their books published!”
 
12. “Most self-published books are rubbish. In all my years at this publishing house, I don’t think we’ve ever published a bad book. Have we, Martha?”
 
13. “Saunders. You’re not saying much. Let me hear you say who we really hate.” “Amazon, Frank. We just hate Amazon.” “Don’t ever forget that, Saunders!”
 
14. “Listen up, everyone. The CEO has this great idea for a new imprint – totally unique. He’s calling it Chocolate Lemon Press. We ask the author to make a small contribution to our vast costs. we double the royalty for the author to 20% and publish in e-book. If it sells well, we can publish it later in print. What ya think?”  “Genius, sir. Absolute genius.”
 
15. “Okay, here’s the deal, Saunders. We’ve already told authors not to send us unsolicited manuscripts. we only want the very best ones that are marketing certs, preferably fully edited and almost ready to publish from our agents. We got the interns doing all the crappy jobs, and even some of the really important ones. We got the distributors to take all our stock so we never have to handle it. We got the retailers selling our books for us. Hell, we’ve even got our authors helping out with the marketing. So, apart from all that, Saunders, is there anything more we need to do?” “No boss.” “Great, great! In that case you’re fired, Saunders!”

 

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