Writing a book today is not a mere matter of showcasing your talent, its becoming a more of a marketing and image building exercise and to en-cash on the boom there have splurged a plenty of online publishing platforms that offer to publish your book irrespective of the content/quality and guidance. The idea of these online portals is to provide a mere backend service to the users and make some no-strings-attached money from it.
Lets try and understand those 5 reasons as to why one should choose traditional publishing houses as compared to the new online mushroom ventures.
1 The Content Mapping : The general complaint we hear is that publishing houses take their own sweet time to analyse and understand the concept of the book before accepting or rejecting it. If we think logically, it makes sense to have a proper analysis of the content and understanding its market worthiness before investing into a book. Whereas on the other hand online publishing portals welcome one and all without a proper analysis of the content that is published. The idea here is to understand whether you wish to publish the content just to satisfy your will or to enlighten the minds of the readers through it. We definitely get prepared for the nittygrities and weak points in a thesis or a script when someone questions us about it and this only takes place in traditional publishing where an author gets a one to one feed back.
2 Cost Effective : Yes For Sure!!, traditional publishing is very cost effective as compared to the packages offered by online publishing portals. Portals can lure you with offers like free publishing but once registered you get their packages on the platter that cost approximately double of that what a traditional publisher might charge you for. In case of traditional publishing, if the content has a higher market potential the authors can definitely get a royalty backed publishing package from the publisher. The range of packages for online publishing portals usually starts at 20k for 5 hard copies being given to the author and no addition services like promotion or design are provided, whereas for this price one can usually get close to 50 hard copies with ebook rights for sales from a traditional publisher.
3 Acceptability : When is one accepted as a competent or a professional writer??, its when his works are credibly published and well marketed across the mediums. Though the online publishing portals definitely offer the benefits of online market but the credibility of these portals is way too lower. In fact various government universities and educational bodies do not consider you as an author if your books and papers are published by an online publishing portal as these platforms dont regulate or study the content and market for the thesis and welcome anyone who comes to their door.
4 Personalised Guidance: On online publishing portals, this service comes with a premium pricing tag, whereas, in traditional publishing, it comes absolutely free. In traditional publishing you can actually talk to or meet the real publisher of your book who has a good knowledge of the market, rather than dealing with call centre executives like in the case of online portals. Here the authors ca understand the potential of their content and can take guidance from the publisher with regards to modifications, future planning, editions etc. As an author its like a blessing to get someone professional to guide you in the course of your book. I would really like to suggest young authors who wish to write on a specific subject, should visit offices of publishers and try to understand the content thats available in the market and find a niche area for themselves. You never know a guidance session can come with the perks like a adrak wali chai at the office as a bonus :).
5 Standing Out: As shared in all the previous points too, that any tom-dick and harry can get his books published on an online publishing platform. If you think of it, these platforms are nothing more than a printing shop that provides add-on services for a price. Getting published from a genuine traditional source makes an author stand out from the clutter of wannabe writers. The content so published through a traditional channel is well guided, well presented and well respected in the market than any of the online publishing portals.
The idea is not to discourage the use of new technologies, rather the core idea is to understand the process and make publishing a book financially viable and widely accepted as genuine content for both the writer and the publisher rather than being just a PR exercise that fades off within 15 days of release. The writers should understand the importance of economic viabilities and long term standing in the market rather than just rushing in for the ease of the concept. A book is your lasting impression on the mind of the reader and with flooding of new books on a daily basis there are very bleak possibilities of a second chance.
Keep reading the blog post for further information regarding publishing your book.
In case of any queries or guidance needed for book publishing feel free to get in touch with me mehndiratta.vaibhav@gmail.com.
