Indie Presses versus Big Publishing Houses

May 27, 2008

I had several exchanges of e-mails with my agent this weekend, largely concerning the potential of a couple of new small publishers who have made their presence known. She seemed to be asking me my opinion. (This is maddening, actually; I don't mind being asked my opinion, but I don't at all like feeling like I'm more clued in on the publishing market than my agent is). Anyway, I finally had to break things down this way:

I'm ambivalent about small presses. I've been published by two. High Country Publishers (now called something else, I think, like the Ingalls Publishing Group) and by Midnight Ink, which is a small imprint of a medium to large publisher. Neither experience, I explained to my agent, was financially satisfying.

I was being delicate. From an editing standpoint and dealing with the editors and to some extent (in as much as you ever really deal with the publisher him or herself) the publisher, the experiences were fine.

It was from the sales, distribution, marketing, advances, royalties, contracts point-of-view where things started to disintegrate pretty quickly.

So let me break down my thoughts for everyone here, noting that I'm not an expert and am mostly talking from an individual experience.

Is it easier to get published by a small press?

Hmmm, in theory. Easy is probably not the best word. Small presses--hence the name--don't necessarily publish a lot of books, so they can be pretty choosy as well. The flipside of the "easier" notion is that their standards are lower, which is puzzling from a writer's perspective; the reality might be that small presses are more likely to publish things that aren't necessarily marketable, don't have as strong a hook and in many cases aren't as polished as their big publishing house brethren. Many small presses publish things based entirely on the taste of the editor/publisher and that may have nothing to do with commercial sales potential.

Do small presses give large advances?

No. They don't have the money. If there are exceptions, I haven't heard of them.

Do small presses give any advances?

Sometimes. When I was published by High Country, no; when I was published by Midnight Ink, yes, although they were very small (I've gotten paid more for magazine articles).

Are small presses more willing to take a chance on something unique?

The assumption being that the reason you're being turned down by larger publishers is that you're too "unique," but I don't know. That seems to be the rumor, but I reviewed books for ForeWord Magazine, which focuses on independent and self-published titles and "poorly written" and/or "unmarketable" might have been better descriptors of the majority of the books. Not all, by any means, but the majority. I'm skeptical about this.

Are small presses more forgiving of lower sales?

Hmmm, the typical small press probably has lower expectations for overall sales numbers than a large NY publisher. That being said, my suspicion is that the question isn't about overall numbers, it's about sell-through. That is to say, if a big NY publisher prints 10,000 copies of your book and sells 8,000 copies, you may or may not be considered a success, depending on the editor and publisher's mood, bottom line, phases of the moon and current philosophy about returns and sell-through. A small press is more likely to try and print 2000 copies or 1000 copies and will probably be pretty happy with an 80% sell-through, which would be 1600 or 800 respectively. Neither of them will be happy with a 50% sell-through.

Do small presses have good distribution?

No. Well, define "good." Compared to, say, Random, Inc? No. Absolutely not. Bookstores know that if Random or Bantam or St. Martin's Press come out with their quarterly catalogue and there are, say, 150 titles in it, and they are pushing the top 15, they can safely order multiple copies of the top 15 books (the frontlist) and then look at their computer system to see how previous titles by the rest sold, and then for new authors, they can look at Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus or a few other trade journals to see what they're saying or, just as likely, if the cover looks good or the title sounds interesting or if their sales person said it sounded great, and order a couple copies. If Big Bill's New Publishing Venture sends their catalogue to the booksellers and they're skeptical of small presses (which they are), they may order a copy or two... or not. And if Big Bill's New Publishing Venture hasn't got an agreement with the two big distributors--Ingram and I'm currently blanking on the one that distributes mostly to libraries, sorry--then they go with a smaller distributor that bookstores may or may not deal with. DISTRIBUTION IS EVERYTHING. POOR DISTRIBUTION IS THE BIGGEST KILLER OF SMALL PRESSES.

Small presses are passionate about books otherwise they wouldn't do it.

In theory. I've given talks to would-be novelists where I ask the question: What is a publisher? The answer? A publisher is a person with money who wants to publish books. Period. There's no school for it, no license, no particular qualifications. So by that definition, any incompetent with a checkbook or line of credit can become a publisher. Some of them are savvier than others. Some of them are doing it for the passion. Some of them think it's a way to churn a buck that requires less work, overhead and upfront costs than, say, buying a Dominos Pizza franchise. Some of them are doing it because they thought it might be fun and they've got some money they're willing to piss away, so why not publishing. They're right about the overhead and upfront costs and probably wrong about the work and the eventual returns, although all you have to do is realize that authors get 8 to 10% of the costs of a book to wonder where the other 90% to 92% of the money goes. (Not all goes to the publisher, in case you were wondering).

Small presses will read unagented materials.

Usually. But typically if you have an agent and he/she sends a manuscript to a big NY publisher, you'll get a response in about 4 weeks, give or take. If you send a manuscript yourself off to a small press, the decision-making may take 3, 4, 8 months or longer. Poison Pen Press twice kept my manuscripts for over a year before turning them down. I've got a manuscript at a small press at the moment where they informed me early in the process that it would probably take 8 months to make a decision. (Their wording. What that means is, the manuscript is going to sit in a pile until somebody gets around to reading it). But yes, by all means, most small presses will look at your manuscript without an agent.

A small press will at least get me published so I can start my career.

This was pretty much the gist of my e-mail response to my agent. It comes down to this: if the goal is just to get published, then small presses are certainly a potential avenue. If you're looking at a fiction writing career, where you actually make real money and might be able to live off it, then small presses are something of a long shot. Also, if you publish a string of novels with small presses that routinely sell 2,000 or 3,000 or even 4,000 copies, by the standards of the small press you're pretty successful, but by the standards of a big New  York publisher you're pretty much a failure and they may not view you as any kind of potential author for them. (It's entirely possible they won't care one way or the other. Some of the NY publishers/editors view small presses like minor league baseball teams that are grooming players for the big leagues and others don't view them as anything at all... some seem to pay no attention to small, independent presses at all, some just out of lack of interest and others as if the small presses are some sort of boring and uninteresting microscopic organisms of no inport). There are arguments on both sides of the fence, and I think you might decide--and it's a completely reasonable decision, in my opinion--that you'd rather get published and develop a readership of 1,000 or 2,000 or whatever than not get published at all. It may seem like an odd hobby that occasionally pays for itself, but hey, you're an author and that's good enough for you.

But the crux of the situation is often trying to decide where you fall on that continuum: career or just published. I'm not making value judgements. It depends entirely on what you want and where you are in your aspirations.

Cheers,

Mark Terry