The Dirty Secret Traditional Publishers Don’t Want You to Know About - Guest Post by David Biddle

Today's guest post comes to us from David Biddle, the author of the novel Beyond the Will of God, as well as several collections of short stories. David is also a contributing writer and columnist with TalkingWriting.com. Find him at The Formality of Occurrence.

As an experienced indie author, David knows some of the ins and outs of both self publishing and traditional publishing routes. Today he shares some of these secrets with FreeBookDude.com. This topic is a little dear to our hearts since FreeBookdude.com's creator Joshua Cook, is an indie writer himself. he knows well the struggles indie authors face. This constant uphill battle was the catalyst that triggered the creation of FreeBookDude.com. Please help us in welcoming Mr. Biddle.

The Dirty Secret Traditional Publishers Don’t Want You to Know About

In the old days of publishing (four years ago and past), any book that sold 10,000 copies – especially by a first-time author – was deemed a success. In fact, most books might have print runs of 5,000 units or less, with publishers figuring that the majority of these won’t sell more than 50% of the total – meaning the publisher will inevitably lose money on most of what they distribute.

We’re in a different world now. Indie writers are taking to the digital publishing platform in droves. Whereas traditional publishers still charge $9.99 or more for electronic books, indie writers generally charge $4.99 on down, with the majority of books priced at either $2.99 or $0.99. And that is usually only after offering their books for free through systems like Kindle Direct Publishing Select or Smashwords coupon program.

My latest book went out on the KDP free network during the weekend of August 17 – 19. It garnered over 10,000 downloads during that one three-day period. Some of my indie author brothers and sisters think I would have done a lot better had I waited until the fall. August is not the time to do business of any kind if it doesn’t involve watersports, eating, or gasoline.

Still…10,000+ readers now have copies of my book in their e-readers. Before that weekend, my novel had been posted at Amazon and featured on a number of Indie websites and I’d sold a grand total of 62 digital copies and 13 paperbacks.

I have no idea how many of those 10,000 readers will like my story. Nor do I even know how many of them will open the file to begin reading. What I do know, however, is something that publishing houses all over North America (and the rest of the world, for that matter) don’t want you to know – the success of my book is almost totally up to you the reader. This is the most fundamental and profound change occurring in the publishing industry today. Readers alone get to decide what books are good and what aren’t so much.

You may think that’s what was going on in the past, but nothing could be further from the truth. First off, there are gatekeepers in the publishing world. Writers essentially either have to luck out, use social influence, or grovel until their knees bleed and they’re raving alcoholics to get agents and publishers to pay attention to their manuscripts. It is absolutely a lie that “good writing will rise to the top.” In fact, it seems just the opposite may be true. The gatekeepers want “marketable product.” A friend of mine who has been a successful novelist for the past twenty years says the best writing he saw up until 2010 never got published.

But it doesn’t just stop with the gatekeepers. The traditional publishing world has two major functions for books: 1) financing product publication and distribution; 2) marketing and sales. Publishing houses are essentially king and queen makers in the book world. If they want a book to be a success, they create pre-publication buzz. They work hard to set up media coverage such as author profiles, news stories, and press events. They also do their best to influence all the venues now open for reviewers – TV, mainstream blogs, radio, magazines, and newspapers. With books the industry deems “certain” best sellers they also invest in advertising campaigns. And all of this is supplemented with market studies and focus group research.

Indie books usually receive no such attention by marketing arms. Indie writers occasionally convince book bloggers to review their books (although the demand for bloggers is now so high there’s generally a 3-6 month waiting list), and maybe they do guest blog posts or take out small ads online. But, really, the only major promotional opportunity indie writers have is to take advantage of free pricing systems. The essence of these systems is that readers decide on their own, with no market research or media manipulation, whether to let a book into their lives or not.

So readers essentially determine whether indie authors will be successes. There’s a bit of help by the likes of Amazon, Smashwords, and Barnes & Noble (these companies have done superb jobs on their point of sales website pages), but for the most part, indie writers succeed because they write books that readers find interesting, fun to read, high quality, and not overly expensive (and sometimes free).

The true heroes in the indie world are all successes because of you the reader: EL James (Fifty Shades of Gray); Joe Konruth (the Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels series) Rachel Abbott (Only the Innocent); Amanda Hocking (Trylle Trilogy) These four, plus numerous others, have all created products and platforms that intrigue readers directly. Most of them took advantage of “free” strategies to give their books initial lift. There were no intermediary forces like publishers or PR firms involved in their initial digital efforts. It was all about the reader. And I would bet that each of these accomplished indie writers will tell you they are tickled pink every morning they wake up knowing that there are thousands of individual readers out there who choose to make them a success.

This whole indie system has publishers and agents rather worried. It’s also possibly created some confusion for at least Amazon. The more readers exercise their desire to download free indie books (or pay reasonable prices) the more success independent writers have, and the less value readers place on the big, expensive institutions that want to charge four to five times as much for an electronic book.

Rumors are that Amazon is considering phasing out the KDP free promotions option because book sales are down. That would be a grave mistake. Readers (customers) are the ones most affected by that kind of decision. As an indie author, it’s great for me that I can opt for a short period of time where there is no price barrier between you and my words. For you as a reader, the opportunity to find quality stories by undiscovered writers has to be a fabulous shopping experience. Trust me, if KDP were to shut down tomorrow, indie writers would figure out how to keep the free thing going.

The writer-reader interface of the new digital publishing world is unbeatable. Successful (and soon-to-be successful) indie writers all know the only thing that matters is their readers. They’re not writing for some Ivy League editor or some Wharton bean counter … or shareholders. They’re writing for you.