The New Age in Publishing Diana Flegal with Alton Gansky

At Blue Ridge Christian Autumn in the Mountain’s Novel Retreat last week, Alton Gansky spoke on the new age of publishing.

I think what he says bears repeating and with his permission, I have listed amongst this post, the highlights of his message.

This age more than any other allows the creative to create and get things into the marketplace.  Self publishing is just one slice of the publishing pie.

Options abound.

Traditional Publishing or Legacy Publishing is a publisher that offers an advance to the author, and a percent royalty on each books sold AFTER the sales have paid back the advance. They provide professional editing and pay for the formatting and book cover design of your book.

Vanity Presses have a bad reputation, and it is well deserved. They will publish anything written by anyone on any subject as long as the writer is willing to pay for it. Product improvement is minimal and the author is required to buy a minimum number of copies. The writer is the primary warehouse and distribution channel for the book. Some vanity presses provide a kind of distribution through their websites.

Small Presses are royalty paying publishers that generally do not offer an advance but pay a higher royalty to the author than traditional publishers. Many authors have found a happy publishing home with the Small Press model.

Many well published authors are taking books that have not found a home in traditional avenues or a book that has gone out of print and are publishing with the small presses. Traditionally published authors that also self-publish are called Hybrid authors. An Indy author is one who chooses to forego traditional publishing to maintain creative control or to publish something that doesn’t fit the current market.

Are you considering self- publishing?

While the stigma once attached to it is not the same as it was five years ago, writers need to beware.

The key to self publishing is to have the right motive.

• A good motivation is: To get good content out because you can, and/ or you have time sensitive material.
• Bad motivation: I want to be published and I can pay to make it happen.

Too many authors get impatient and publish before their story is fully developed or their manuscript has been professionally edited. Keep in mind, if one has a 100,000 word manuscript, the average length of an historical fiction, and it is 99% accurate, you will have 1000 typos.    

Seek out a good professional editor. Slow down and be sure you are putting your best possible work out.

Exciting times abound.  

More can be found about Alton Gansky, Litt.D. at Gansky.Communications

www.altongansky.com

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Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference

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