How many times have you heard the phrase in the title at church board meetings, committee meetings, the publishing industry? Change: “You know it don’t come easy.”
The publishing industry is notorious for moving slowly. However, the challenges of e-publishing have engineered some movement urging the powers-that-be in the biz to get rid of their 4-cylinder approach with the “tried and true” methodology and upgrade to a dyno-chipped 8-cylinder if they don’t want to get left in the dust by authors deciding to do it themselves.
Can you imagine if Karen Kingsbury, Ted Dekker, and a few other big name authors bagged the traditional publishing companies and elected to self-publish their future novels? Both of these authors are marketing machines so there’s very little chance their reading clientele would drop off even slightly. Granted, their publishers pay the big dollars for marketing their books—in keeping with the generally accepted practice of the big names getting the majority of the marketing dollars—but it’s a well known fact that Karen Kingsbury has also invested thousands of dollars in marketing her books which of course makes her a perennial favorite with her publisher(s).
Stop and think about the mechanics (don’t worry: I understand this part) of creating a book. The services of outfits like WinePress provide cover design, typesetting, and even e-reader adaptation. Their new packages include the requirement for edited work—they employ professional freelancers just like the royalty presses. Usually, depending on how much editing is necessary, their product is produced and shipped faster than traditional publishers, and the author is consulted and informed of every wonderful element of their book all along the way. A project manager is assigned, and off they go! An author can elect to do straight e-publishing, POD, or collect the bound printed books which equal or surpass, as far as appearance, the quality of those produced by royalty publishers.
And then we come to the bane of all publishing: the marketing of these novels. We’ve discussed here many times how difficult it is to pinpoint what sells fiction. Word of mouth is the one “given” according to nearly everyone who’s professionally tried to market literature. However, an author could die before the word of mouth penetrates the masses with sterling recommendations to read his/her book!
I know being traditionally published appears to be the stamp of approval assigned to one’s writing. It’s an affirmation that professionals approve and have given value to one’s work. I don’t disagree. But previously contracted authors are now without contracts and considering what that means to their author status. The dabbling in thoughts of the smeared and degraded self-publishing has begun to raise its forbidden head to peak over the high razor-wired walls and assert its availability. Some fire their Uzis at first glance with scathing remarks about the “lack of quality” and other insults. However, production-wise, the books that come from places like WinePress are more tightly managed than those from most royalty publishers. Writing-wise? Who knows? They go through an editing process just like traditionally published books. I’ve read some poor royalty-published novels in the last year . . .
Anyway, at least there are choices for those who are tired of “the way we’ve always done it”.
God, you’re so generous to your people. You take us down roads of your design and what a journey it is! What a joy when we comply. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.
Into the Fire 
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