Most everyone feels they have a book in them. If you feel you do and you eventually write your masterpiece, how will you get it published? With advancing technology, anyone can now get their book published in some form or another. For authors, the world of publishing has pretty much blow wide open.
There are two types of publishers- traditional publishers and everyone else. Traditional publishers are any publisher who pays an author an “advance” in hopes of getting their money back through sales. The traditional publisher model has stayed fairly consistent over the years. However, changes in the publishing industry are slowly forcing the traditional publishers to modify their business models.
The other publishers have been more flexible and have evolved with the times. Subsidy and vanity publishers publish any book for a fee, no matter the quality of the manuscript. Off-shoots of these ideas developed such as co-publishing and shared publishing, where publishing companies took an active role in helping the author and were more discerning about what manuscripts they published.
More recently, as technology allowed, POD or print on demand companies formed. They may or may not work with the author, but their main purpose was to only print a copy of a book when the book was bought. Finally, publishing has evolved most recently into e-books; books that are read on a computer and not physically printed. This e-book niche exploded beyond computers with the advent of e-readers such as the Kindle, Nook or iPad and people can even read books on their smart phones. Nowadays, the opportunities for an author to get their work published seem endless!
Book publishing is difficult no matter how a book is published. And like all industries, there are good players and bad players which can give the different types of publishing a bad reputation. But each method of publishing has its benefits and detriments and one is not necessarily better than another. They are just different.
With the new and different publishing opportunities come new and different responsibilities for authors. Authors need to be aware of these prior to choosing any one specific method to publish their book. But at least, there are now choices for any author to get out their masterpiece.
If you are interested in a publishing consultation regarding a book you want to write, please contact us for a free consult at http://www.ourlittlebooks.com/contact/