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Episode 2: Indie vs. Traditional Battle
36 Plays3 months ago
Lindsay and Paul wage war in the most epic of publishing battles: indie vs. traditional publishing. Listen in as we duke it out! Spoiler alert: We are supportive of all publishing paths and seek to provide highlights and drawbacks of each to help you choose the right path for your goals and personality.
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Transcript
Introduction to Indie vs Traditional Publishing
00:00:15
Lindsay Franklin
Hello and welcome back to Quilling It. I am Lindsay Franklin.
00:00:20
Paul Regnier
And I'm Paul Regner.
00:00:21
Lindsay Franklin
And today we are going to be talking about indie publishing versus traditional publishing. Now, Paul, you have done both of these routes. You have experience as a traditional author and you also have experience as an indie author.
00:00:32
Paul Regnier
Yes.
Paul's Transition to Indie Publishing
00:00:38
Lindsay Franklin
so I would love to hear some of the things that you love most about being an indie author.
00:00:46
Paul Regnier
Right. Yes. I was kind of forced into it. i I started traditional. Like you said, I got a contract for a science fiction trilogy.
00:00:57
Paul Regnier
And then um I was working on this urban fantasy story that just kind of hit me out of nowhere. And so I was pitching it to my publisher at the time. And they were like, oh, this isn't quite what we're looking for. We thought you were going to write another science fiction book.
00:01:14
Paul Regnier
And I'm like, yeah, that was my plan too. But, you know, inspiration struck and here we are. So they said, well, you know, we're not really going to, we're not interested in that just yet.
00:01:25
Paul Regnier
And again, I think I mentioned like on a previous podcast that, you know, those are the kinds of things you can't take personal as an author because there's a myriad of reasons why a publisher doesn't necessarily want to publish something. They may have a similar title.
00:01:39
Paul Regnier
um It may just not be something they're interested in at the moment. Maybe they will be in the future. But um for me, it was kind of like, I knew I really liked the story and I wanted to get it out there.
Lead Times and Control in Publishing
00:01:50
Paul Regnier
And so, and I'd heard all about this whole indie publishing craze because this was probably about 10 years. This was like, when was this? 2017? Something around there. So indie publishing was already kind of like,
00:02:06
Paul Regnier
up and running and you know gangbusters.
00:02:07
Lindsay Franklin
Mm-hmm.
00:02:08
Paul Regnier
And so I thought like, okay, I wanna look into this. And I really just started doing research and looking around and um found that I really took to it. I really enjoyed like learning all these, especially when it kind of came to, um oh there's different strategies for marketing your book and publishing your book and how fast you could do it.
00:02:27
Paul Regnier
You could just be so nimble, right? Like I think at the time, if I was gonna get published with ah the traditional route, I would have to plan for like, okay, they decided to you know sign the contract and now I have to wait like a year or a year and a half for that title to come out. Does that sound like your experience?
00:02:48
Lindsay Franklin
Yes. And so at Enclave, it is it's at least a year typically um from signing the contract to when the book is going to actually be available.
00:02:54
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:02:59
Lindsay Franklin
Sometimes it's longer than that. um And if you are at a larger house, it can even be two years. um
00:03:06
Paul Regnier
Wow.
00:03:07
Lindsay Franklin
It's, yes, there is a very long lead up time to
00:03:11
Paul Regnier
See, those are the kind of timeframes that drive like the indie writer crazy, right?
00:03:17
Lindsay Franklin
right Yeah.
00:03:17
Paul Regnier
And I don't know if it has to do with being impatient or impulsive or what it is. But when my book is done, I always think like, well, okay, I want to um want to publish it. I'm ready to go, you know?
00:03:28
Paul Regnier
At least you know I want to edit it first, right? That's an important step. And that is part of the indie process too. I'm not saying indie is like you just sloppily write it and throw it up and just go, yeah.
00:03:35
Lindsay Franklin
Yes.
00:03:38
Paul Regnier
um you You still want to get professional editing. that's That's an important part of the process. um but you can kind of But here's another cool thing that I will say about the indie route.
00:03:50
Paul Regnier
um And I think we can all agree kind of like indie writers are a little bit cooler, right? Isn't that like a commonly accepted thing?
Financial Aspects: Advances and Royalties
00:03:57
Lindsay Franklin
Wait a minute. I did not agree to this We did not sign a contract that had that in the fine print.
00:04:01
Paul Regnier
Okay.
00:04:04
Lindsay Franklin
What is happening?
00:04:05
Paul Regnier
Okay. Well, okay.
00:04:05
Lindsay Franklin
Okay.
00:04:06
Paul Regnier
It's a personal opinion. No, I'm just kidding. No, it's all good. um i I like the the nimbleness you have when you can kind of make the call like, oh, you know what? I really like this editor and I've got like ah this good connection.
00:04:21
Paul Regnier
Um, and, oh, look at this company that does cover art. Oh, love their stuff. I want to work with them. So just that ability to kind of freely pick and choose, um, the collaborators that you're going to work with as you launch your project, it can be very, um, I get, it sounds like control freak kind of mentality, but,
00:04:42
Lindsay Franklin
I was going to make that joke.
00:04:43
Paul Regnier
Oh, darn it. Sorry. took your punchline. apologize. no but um But I don't know. So how do you look at that when when you when you see that, like, oh, the ability to choose? Because you know as you're on the traditionally published route, um how do you look at that and in like as far as like positives and negatives as far as your experience?
00:05:07
Lindsay Franklin
Yeah, it's it's interesting because as an indie author, you are the publisher, right? You are your own publisher. And so you are making decisions as a publisher, who you're going to hire as your editor, what your cover is going to look like, who you're going to hire to do that work. And all of those decisions are decisions you are making essentially as the publisher.
00:05:28
Lindsay Franklin
So when you're in a traditional publishing setup, you're there is an outside entity um making those decisions for you.
00:05:34
Paul Regnier
Mm-hmm.
00:05:36
Lindsay Franklin
And this varies a whole lot depending on what house you're with, how your contract is structured. So that is something else I should mention is that I have experience at a kind of small midsize publisher, which is Enclave. And that's where all of my fiction is. But my nonfiction is actually at a big five ah imprint.
00:05:57
Lindsay Franklin
So I've got that kind of ah larger house experience too as an author. um And my contracts at these two different entities are are really, really different. And so I have way more input at Enclave. And that's one of the reasons that I like to traditionally publish with Enclave is because I do have a little bit more say, but at the end of the day, those decisions are publisher decisions because they are the ones investing the money And so that is kind of a ah maybe a good way to highlight one of the ah the benefits of traditional publishing is that when i sign a contract, there is no money that is exchanged that I have to put right?
00:06:44
Lindsay Franklin
Right.
00:06:44
Paul Regnier
Right. Mm-hmm.
Financial Struggles and Career Goals
00:06:45
Lindsay Franklin
I'm getting paid. i get paid by the publisher.
00:06:47
Paul Regnier
right
00:06:49
Lindsay Franklin
That's how that works in traditional publishing. If you are ever signing a contract that you think is a traditional contract and you are being asked to pay money up front, that is actually a vanity publisher or sometimes there are these kind of hybrid setups where there's like author services houses where it's essentially somebody trying to help you indie publish.
00:07:14
Lindsay Franklin
We should have a whole episode just about those types of publishers to um to talk about that because it's like a whole separate thing.
00:07:18
Paul Regnier
Yeah, right. good
00:07:21
Lindsay Franklin
But in true traditional publishing, there is not... a single dollar that you are paying that goes toward the production of that book. ah Marketing is a whole separate thing. but um So I don't have to pay for editing. i don't have to pay to hire the cover designer. My publisher takes care of that for me.
00:07:41
Lindsay Franklin
But because they are the one with that financial investment, the cover needs to be what they think is going to reach my readers and what they think is going to sell and what they consider beautiful and professional and an industry quality and cover and industry quality editing.
00:07:59
Lindsay Franklin
So it is much more of a partnership and you do, that there is a give and take there.
00:08:00
Paul Regnier
yeah
00:08:05
Lindsay Franklin
So you do have to be willing to work with the team and to sometimes be willing to not have the final final say on certain things in your own book which can be weird sometimes that that's a weird dynamic that you have to kind of get used to
00:08:21
Paul Regnier
For us control freaks, right?
00:08:25
Lindsay Franklin
yes you very super cool control freaks
00:08:26
Paul Regnier
Well, I would... Yeah, I think you've probably hit on the biggest benefit of the traditional publishing route, which is money, right?
00:08:37
Paul Regnier
Now, I don't know if listeners have met a lot of writers out there, but typically we're broke. And ah because writing doesn't typically make a ton of money. It's you know and like most art, right? That's the term you know starving artist or struggling artist or whatever.
00:08:55
Paul Regnier
is you know pretty commonplace. you know Of course, like people getting started are thinking like, oh, JK Rowling, she's a billionaire, or whoever, Michael Crichton, whoever comes Stephen King, whoever like the big people come to mind, you're like, yeah, that's a really tiny percentage of authors.
00:09:07
Lindsay Franklin
Yep.
00:09:11
Paul Regnier
Most people are just struggling. you know And if you're lucky enough to make it a full-time gig, that's like pretty awesome. But I wouldn't say that's typical. I would say that's kind of atypical.
00:09:22
Paul Regnier
um
00:09:22
Lindsay Franklin
ye
00:09:23
Paul Regnier
But it's a good goal. it's It's my goal. I'm not quite there yet, but I'm trying. um But yeah, the so the money thing, that's pretty huge to be able to have. And I think especially for like a writer that's starting out, to have a publisher come alongside and say, hey, you know what?
00:09:42
Paul Regnier
Your stuff is good. It's not just in your head. you're not You're not living in your, you know, it's not just your mom that thinks you're cool. We think you're cool too. And we're going to prove it by making an investment in your story.
00:09:57
Paul Regnier
That's like this hugely validating thing.
00:10:00
Lindsay Franklin
Yes.
00:10:00
Paul Regnier
You know, like guess if you're starting now, there's so much doubt, right? You have so much doubt like, oh, I haven't published anything. ah my writing any good? I don't know. My friends think I'm pretty cool, but I don't know. Like now I'm competing in the publishing industry with a ton of great writers out there and I'm going to be compared and like critiqued. and um But to have a publisher come in and say, no, no, your stuff is good. You're pro level and we want to put the money down um to publish you.
00:10:29
Paul Regnier
That can be like this gigantic like confidence boost as an author.
00:10:34
Lindsay Franklin
Yes.
00:10:35
Paul Regnier
um and i I know it definitely was for me when i was when I first started out and got that contract.
00:10:35
Lindsay Franklin
I think you hit. Yeah.
00:10:39
Paul Regnier
I'm like, wow, okay, cool. I think I can do this. um
00:10:43
Lindsay Franklin
Yes.
00:10:43
Paul Regnier
So that's where I think um i don't I don't want to like cast dispersions on the traditionally published route because there is a lot of benefits to it.
00:10:54
Lindsay Franklin
Yes.
00:10:55
Paul Regnier
Having said that,
00:10:57
Lindsay Franklin
Uh-oh. Here we go. Buckle up, guys. Are we ready?
00:11:02
Paul Regnier
I have...
00:11:02
Lindsay Franklin
Indie Man is here
Royalties and Revenue Streams for Indie Authors
00:11:05
Lindsay Franklin
to comment on the situation.
00:11:06
Paul Regnier
Indy man.
00:11:07
Lindsay Franklin
Man.
00:11:07
Paul Regnier
That should be a superhero. um There is just like I was saying before, that flexibility and the ability to really um almost have that confidence like, hey, you know, i i know what I'm doing and and I've had this edited and I'm confident in my work and I think it's ready to go.
00:11:28
Paul Regnier
um that can be a great spot you know to be in. And you know it took me a while. Sometimes it takes a while to kind of build that confidence. But also on the um on the marketing side and and ads is like a big part of it that maybe we can get into a future episode. But When you can run ads and you can make this huge percentage, because we mentioned money, like, hey, this is great that the traditional publish publisher will put up this huge investment to get you going.
00:11:53
Lindsay Franklin
Mm hmm. Yep.
00:11:59
Paul Regnier
But once you start selling your books, your royalties are what, like typically 15% maybe, at least for your initial print run. Does that sound pretty typical?
00:12:11
Lindsay Franklin
Yes. So I'm trying to think like how do i how do I comment without commenting?
00:12:19
Paul Regnier
Oh, is there a secret sauce in here in the insider world that I don't know about?
00:12:19
Lindsay Franklin
What can I say about this? so there's yeah Well, it's so weird. This is something that actually drives me a little bit crazy, I'm not going to lie, um about traditional publishing and just sort of the industry the industry, whatever that means.
00:12:35
Lindsay Franklin
But there is a little bit of a code of silence sometimes about certain things.
00:12:40
Paul Regnier
um
00:12:40
Lindsay Franklin
And that actually bothers me because I feel like that puts authors at a disadvantage when we don't even have a framework to understand what's normal or what would be what's expected in a traditional contract versus what might be predatory in a traditional contract.
00:12:59
Lindsay Franklin
So um That bothers me a little bit. That is, of course, an agent is a really great person to have on your team if you are going to enter into the traditional publishing space because an agent is ah not only knows what is expected and standard in the industry, but is actually an expert in those things and an expert in publishing contract language. And so um i would not I would not be in the traditional space without my agent.
00:13:30
Lindsay Franklin
by my side and able to navigate some of those things for me. um So with, with that whole disclaimer about the code of silence and all of that, yes, the royalty percentages are typically quite low.
00:13:41
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:13:42
Lindsay Franklin
You could see anywhere from, I mean, I've seen probably as low as like maybe 10% even um for authors. And then it can be anywhere up to, you know,
00:13:55
Lindsay Franklin
20, 25, depending on the format and that we're talking about, because they're it'll usually be broken down by format. You get different percentages for physical format versus ebook and audio and all the things.
00:14:06
Paul Regnier
right
00:14:07
Lindsay Franklin
So it gets a little complicated. But suffice it to say, the percentages are much, much, much, much lower than if you are indie publishing and you are acting as your own publisher, you're getting a much bigger piece of the pie.
00:14:18
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:14:22
Paul Regnier
and and And sometimes in those trad contracts, it's tiered, right? Like, hey, if you sell, if you cross this amount of sales, like let's say if you sell 5,000 books, then you jump up to this second tier, which is now you are earning 20% or something like that.
00:14:38
Paul Regnier
Is that pretty standard too?
00:14:38
Lindsay Franklin
<unk> It is. And so you'll see those different kind of benchmarks.
00:14:41
Paul Regnier
Okay.
00:14:43
Lindsay Franklin
So you as the author, and that's the thing, I never want to make it sound like your publisher is your enemy, beat right? Because most of the time, we have the same goal. I mean, I work on the back end of the publishing side of things too. So when I'm speaking about this, I'm speaking as an author who is traditionally published, but also as someone who is an actor at ah publishing house, right? So we have the same goals as our authors. I want to sell as many of your books as I possibly can. That is my goal as the managing editor at Enclave. Like,
00:15:17
Lindsay Franklin
and And that is in line with what each of our authors wants for their own ah books as well. So I don't want to make it sound like it's this adversarial relationship. It can be, but it certainly doesn't have to be. It's more of a partnership in my mind.
00:15:31
Lindsay Franklin
um But
00:15:31
Paul Regnier
Right. Right.
00:15:32
Lindsay Franklin
Authors are definitely incentivized to hit some of those benchmarks because we will be making a slightly bigger piece of the pie in royalties when we, and the reason publishers do that is because when you're hitting, whether it's 5,000 units, 10,000 units, whatever it is that that they've tiered, you know, the the benchmarks at, um it's because the author or the publisher, excuse me, is very confident at that point that they have recouped their investment.
00:15:41
Paul Regnier
right
00:16:00
Lindsay Franklin
in that particular title, um they have made back the money that they invested in the production. um You know, so all of those overhead costs, ah paying people like me to work there, um all of those things, costs have been recouped. And so it's like, yeah, you're out there, you're selling and and hitting that target.
00:16:21
Lindsay Franklin
You get a bigger piece of the pie now as the authors.
00:16:23
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:16:23
Lindsay Franklin
So
00:16:24
Paul Regnier
And sometimes, which we didn't mention, sometimes, not always, but sometimes there's what they call an advance, right?
00:16:32
Lindsay Franklin
Uh-huh.
00:16:32
Paul Regnier
So they'll give you an advance, certain sum of money, depending on the author, right?
00:16:33
Lindsay Franklin
Correct.
00:16:37
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:16:38
Lindsay Franklin
Mm-hmm.
00:16:38
Paul Regnier
I'm sure that like the top tier authors that are well-known, they get like huge advances.
00:16:43
Lindsay Franklin
Huge.
00:16:43
Paul Regnier
But when you are offered in advance, you sort of have to um earn that money back through book sales. And then you don't really make anything more until you hit that mark and you've made it all back. Then you start making additional profits. That's pretty standard, right?
00:17:01
Paul Regnier
Okay.
00:17:02
Lindsay Franklin
Correct. So if you and and it is also very common, um something that has happened in the 15, 16 years since I got into publishing is these smaller kind of boutique traditional houses. So where they are truly traditional in the way that Enclave is.
00:17:19
Lindsay Franklin
um But they are they're small, they're independent, they're not connected to any of kind of the the big publishing industry machine um houses. And it is common for there to be either no advance or a very small house.
00:17:35
Lindsay Franklin
advance. And that can seem like, well, gosh, okay, then is the author ever getting paid? And the benefit to a contract like that is that typically the royalty rates are going to be a little higher.
00:17:46
Lindsay Franklin
um If you're getting absolutely no advance, the the publisher might be offering you a little bit higher percentage. um But it also means you're going to be earning that cut right away. So you don't have that advance to earn back. If you say,
00:18:02
Lindsay Franklin
sign a contract and get a $3,000 advance as the author. That's ah that's a modest, um you know, for a large house, that would be a very modest advance. um Sometimes you see these deals that are being signed with these really like big houses. And sometimes it's not even a big name author yet. It's like a big debut.
00:18:22
Lindsay Franklin
And it's like a seven figure deal where the author is getting seven figure contract.
00:18:24
Paul Regnier
Whoa.
00:18:26
Lindsay Franklin
That does happen. um That always signals to me that it's not the norm. I should say that it is not the norm.
00:18:33
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:18:34
Lindsay Franklin
And these are the the really large houses that are doing that. It signals to me that they are planning to invest a ton of money in marketing that book.
Choosing Collaborators and Avoiding Vanity Presses
00:18:44
Lindsay Franklin
And so
00:18:45
Paul Regnier
Because they just feel like, oh, this is going to be a hit.
00:18:48
Lindsay Franklin
They feel like it's going to be a hit. They feel like, you know, it could be the next big whatever. And so that is the publisher taking a huge gamble. um But you do see that.
00:18:57
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:18:58
Lindsay Franklin
You see those six and seven figure deals happen. But let's use a much more reasonable number.
00:19:03
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:19:03
Lindsay Franklin
We'll say $3,000 for the advance, not the big six figure, seven figure deal. um
00:19:08
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:19:09
Lindsay Franklin
And so you have to.
00:19:10
Paul Regnier
Because that's the thing you hear about those, right? Those are the ones you hear about, especially as a new author.
00:19:12
Lindsay Franklin
Yes.
00:19:15
Paul Regnier
And you're thinking, oh, sweet. you know I'm going to write this book, six figures, cha-ching. And that's like rare right to get that.
00:19:23
Lindsay Franklin
So rare, so, so rare, um, much more common, you know, in kind of the, the four figure range.
00:19:24
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:19:30
Lindsay Franklin
And then, like I said, if you're siding with a really tiny indie house, very common for there to be no advance at all. So, um,
00:19:37
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:19:38
Lindsay Franklin
and And the contract might be just structured a little bit differently in that case. But so if you have, say, $3,000 as an advance, then, and say your percentage, your royalty percentage is like 15% on your first X number of copies. So however the publisher is calculating that 15%, say you're making it it So many things depend on retail price and how they, you know, the discount that the the distributor is getting. And it's very complex.
00:20:08
Lindsay Franklin
ah But that's why we love our accountant at ah Enclave slash Oasis, Charmaine, holding down the fort for us with all these these numbers.
00:20:08
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:20:16
Lindsay Franklin
But um it's because it's very complicated. But let's just say you're making as the author a dollar or two per book.
00:20:23
Paul Regnier
right
00:20:23
Lindsay Franklin
So you're having to sell then 3,000 units, right? 1,500, 3,000 units before you're going to earn out that $3,000 advance.
00:20:36
Lindsay Franklin
Does that make sense?
00:20:37
Paul Regnier
Okay, yes, right.
00:20:38
Lindsay Franklin
Yeah. so
00:20:39
Paul Regnier
Yeah. Oh, go ahead.
00:20:41
Lindsay Franklin
it's a lot.
00:20:41
Paul Regnier
Sorry.
00:20:42
Lindsay Franklin
It's a lot. It's just, there's there's a lot of pressure. So for those authors who are signing those six-figure, seven-figure deals, you can imagine the number of units that they would have to move in order to earn out that advance and then start seeing royalties after that, it's a lot of units, a lot of units.
00:21:01
Paul Regnier
Right, yeah.
00:21:02
Lindsay Franklin
oh So there's pressure that comes with with a contract that has an advance.
00:21:08
Paul Regnier
So that is the traditional publishing royalty framework. So now I will pull back the cover on the indie royalties, which are so much better.
00:21:20
Paul Regnier
No, I'm just kidding. They are, but they're, again, you don't have anyone else in your corner to help you. But like, so for me, like my, um for several books now, I've gone exclusive through Amazon for my publishing.
00:21:36
Lindsay Franklin
Okay.
00:21:38
Paul Regnier
And when you go exclusive, which also means you can be part of there um you know their KDP program and their Kindle Unlimited program, where people can join Kindle Unlimited and for like a monthly fee, they can read as much as they want. right It's almost like paying for like a streaming service or something, but for books.
00:21:56
Paul Regnier
um So, when since I'm published exclusively on Amazon, for my eBooks, I'm making like 70% royalty. So, just as a contrast, that at least on its face value seems like, whoa, I just jumped from 15% to 70%, that's so huge.
00:22:17
Paul Regnier
um Paperback's a little less. Paperback is 60%, but then you have to minus like printing costs and taxes and blah, blah, blah. So just to put that in perspective, when I sell a book, a paperback that's like 15 bucks, I'll usually make like $5 and something cents.
00:22:35
Paul Regnier
So yeah, still pretty great, but um but yeah.
00:22:37
Lindsay Franklin
Okay, yeah. It's good.
00:22:41
Paul Regnier
um But that 60% can sound misleading at first. Like, wait, I only got five bucks, but you know it costs a lot more to print. Like eBooks are just like, you know it doesn't cost you anything. So, yeah.
00:22:53
Lindsay Franklin
And I think that's why ebooks, and correct me if I'm wrong because you will be the expert here, but I think ebooks are a really important ah piece of the indie publishing model.
00:22:53
Paul Regnier
so
00:23:03
Lindsay Franklin
like
00:23:03
Paul Regnier
so yeah
00:23:04
Lindsay Franklin
and it's it's huge. Whereas in traditional, and this is not our stance at Enclave, so I'm not speaking for Enclave, but I will sometimes see big five traditional houses out there where they have their eBooks priced like more than a paper bag.
00:23:18
Lindsay Franklin
And I'm going, guys, what are you doing?
00:23:19
Paul Regnier
Yeah, which is ridiculous, right? Yeah.
00:23:21
Lindsay Franklin
And it's because the eBook format is not as ah big a deal to them. they Really the print format is their bread and butter and that's what they're focused on.
00:23:28
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:23:33
Lindsay Franklin
So they'll have the ebook out there. They throw it, you know, it's like $19.99 for your ebook. And I'm like, ah you know, just choking on that price. But um i'm I'm imagining ebook only readers who love that, you know, those authors will still pay it, I suppose.
00:23:41
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:23:47
Paul Regnier
Uh-huh.
00:23:48
Lindsay Franklin
um But for the most part.
00:23:50
Paul Regnier
I think that's their way of thumbing their nose at Amazon because they're like, oh, no, we're not going to play your game with your e-books. we're We're going to trick it so people have to buy our paperbacks or our hardcover, whatever it is. you know And I think a lot of um ah statistics that come out like for book sales are based purely on the paperback sales, on the hardcover.
00:24:02
Lindsay Franklin
Yeah.
00:24:11
Paul Regnier
And they don't even like mention that. like ebook sales, because they know that's sort of pumping up the indie market and they want to kind of, I guess, still pretend it doesn't exist. At least the big five don't.
00:24:23
Lindsay Franklin
Yeah, it's very different.
00:24:24
Paul Regnier
But so anyways, so getting back to the royalties. Yes. So on Amazon, you can definitely make more, especially if you go exclusive. Yeah. Now, I know there's a lot of people that are like, oh, Amazon, blah, you know, i want to publish wide to be available to everyone.
00:24:41
Paul Regnier
But the other benefit of exclusivity on Amazon is the page reads on Kindle Unlimited, which I i think those account for probably 50 to 60% of my royalties, believe it or not.
00:24:53
Lindsay Franklin
Wow.
00:24:54
Paul Regnier
um which sounds crazy right because you make i think like a half a penny a page when people read but it adds up it's crazy how it adds up you know um so if you're getting like thousands and thousands of page reads rolling in you know that that could be nice like i think the other day i saw like there was a thousand page reads and i think it was like five bucks or something like that or you know around i'm kind of spitballing here but that's
00:24:54
Lindsay Franklin
Wow.
00:25:04
Lindsay Franklin
Yeah.
00:25:18
Lindsay Franklin
Sure. Right.
00:25:19
Paul Regnier
around the same, and that's not that's not like atypical you know for a day. So it can be really cool because you have one product, but it's going out in these multiple ways of making money for it, right?
00:25:33
Paul Regnier
Hey, someone bought my ebook, or they bought it in paperback or hardcover, or they read through Kindle Unlimited, or audiobook, which is like this new, this is another episode, but
00:25:33
Lindsay Franklin
right
00:25:46
Paul Regnier
Amazon just started this virtual voice thing, with which is AI audiobook. And now I just like pissed off a bunch of people because they were like, ah, boo, AI.
00:25:53
Lindsay Franklin
Cool. Yep.
00:25:55
Paul Regnier
I hate you. You're siding with the robots. but um So since I've been an exclusive author with them for a couple of years, like I was offered to be part of their beta program for this.
00:26:08
Paul Regnier
um Now, I've done an audiobook the typical way. you know I hired a narrator a professional narrator and did that, and that was awesome, but it's expensive. It's like really expensive.
00:26:17
Lindsay Franklin
yeah
00:26:19
Paul Regnier
and The guy that I work with actually gave me a really good deal, um but it's still ah big investment. and I think I ended up maybe breaking even, um and or at least by now I've broken even.
00:26:30
Lindsay Franklin
Okay. Yeah.
00:26:31
Paul Regnier
Now, it's like you know profit, but um But it took a while. And and so that's that's kind of a risky thing unless you're like this huge author that can guarantee like, oh, yeah, people are going to go crazy with this audiobook.
00:26:35
Lindsay Franklin
yeah
00:26:44
Paul Regnier
um It can be a big investment. Like I think typically it's like a grand minimum for for producing an audiobook. and And a lot of times it's more than that. It's a couple grand.
00:26:55
Paul Regnier
So to have a um service through Amazon where it's like, oh, you can just kind of click a button and now we have ah AI reading your book. Sounds pretty darn good, at least for my opinion.
00:27:09
Paul Regnier
So again, don't hate me. I'm sorry, but um I don't have the money to make all my books audiobooks. And I like to offer that you know to readers that because there's a lot of people out there that only have the time to listen to audiobooks.
00:27:23
Paul Regnier
Maybe they don't have the time to just sit down and read. So for me, it's just another way to offer my book. And and I don't charge the typical audiobook price. I i'd lower it. i I think it's like $7 that I offer it for.
00:27:34
Lindsay Franklin
Oh, wow.
00:27:34
Paul Regnier
but um But yeah, that's something you can do. And again, that's i know that's all controversial. I don't want to get into that blah, blah, blah. blah But yeah. Anyways, it's something I've done, and it's just a nice way of having another format to
Support Systems in Traditional Publishing
00:27:47
Paul Regnier
offer it in.
00:27:47
Lindsay Franklin
Yeah.
00:27:48
Paul Regnier
um The same book, one book in like five different formats. So five different ways to earn money from the same story. That's kind of cool.
00:27:56
Lindsay Franklin
Yeah.
00:27:57
Paul Regnier
um
00:27:58
Lindsay Franklin
It's very cool.
00:27:58
Paul Regnier
But yeah, so that's the royalty. I think we've covered kind of the royalty portion of it. um But now what about, what would you say about the ability and kind of the freedom that an indie author has for picking who they work with, like as far as like editors and cover designers and and that kind of thing?
00:28:04
Lindsay Franklin
Yes.
00:28:17
Paul Regnier
How do you view that from the traditional lens?
00:28:18
Lindsay Franklin
Yeah.
00:28:21
Lindsay Franklin
you know it's another one of those things where it can definitely be a double-edged sword because of course as an indie you're able to pick who you want and there's there's freedom that comes with that and that's really cool to have that freedom
00:28:34
Paul Regnier
Right. Mm-hmm.
00:28:37
Lindsay Franklin
The other side of that is, what if you can't afford somebody who is kind of top tier or giving really you know solid professional feedback, someone who's very experienced? Or what if you are just starting out and you don't even know how to parse who is a good editor and who is not? i When I was in the freelance editor space,
00:29:00
Lindsay Franklin
I saw a whole wide range of you know people offering services and sometimes charging a ton. And so you think, oh, that person's great because they charge an arm and a leg.
00:29:11
Lindsay Franklin
Not always the case ah that they actually yep that they actually have the skills.
00:29:12
Paul Regnier
Ouch.
00:29:15
Lindsay Franklin
So um that can be really tricky. And I have seen indie authors where they have paid so much money and then you look at the finished product and I'm just like, I want to cry because I'm thinking, oh, you know, they just, this needed better editing.
00:29:31
Lindsay Franklin
And it's sad because they did invest, they did pay for it and it just, they didn't get
00:29:31
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:29:37
Lindsay Franklin
the product that they deserved to get um or the service that they deserve to get. So that can be a tricky thing where when you are working with a traditional publisher, if they are more established, if they are reputable, you can feel fairly confident that you are going to get industry standard quality edits because there's going to be somebody like me at the publisher who is vetting those editors and, you know, looking at their qualifications and making sure that their work is ah quality. And if something comes back and it's not quality, because that does happen sometimes,
00:30:16
Lindsay Franklin
you have some recourse. You as the author can go to your publisher and say, hey, I'm feeling a little bit uncomfortable with how this copy edit went or how you know the proofread went or whatever.
00:30:21
Paul Regnier
Thank
00:30:28
Lindsay Franklin
And again, somebody like me at your publishing house is going to take care of that for you, is going to look into it, is going to have that work redone, is going to, you know, or is going to explain to you why that edit was okay and soothe your fears on that. So there's, you know, again, it's like having that team and having that support system in place um is the trade-off, I feel, for ah losing a little bit of your freedom. and I think that is one of the big overarching benefits to, aside from not having to invest your dollars up front in your book, um the other really, really big benefit to to traditional publishing for me is that you have a team.
00:31:13
Lindsay Franklin
You have a team and a support system there that you are not responsible for selecting yourself and finding all of those people and making sure that they're affordable, that they're quality, all of those different things.
Marketing Insights and Strategies
00:31:26
Lindsay Franklin
Somebody else is doing that for you. And somebody who might even be more of an expert is in charge of vetting those professionals for you. And so having that safety net feels good.
00:31:40
Paul Regnier
Yes. Dang it. You're very convincing. I think if this was in a court, you'd be winning right now. Of um
00:31:47
Lindsay Franklin
I love indie publishing, by the way, you guys. I have to say, I think i think that Paul and I both are supportive of all routes, whatever like makes sense for that author.
00:31:57
Paul Regnier
course.
00:31:58
Lindsay Franklin
And I ultimately, my hope is to be a hybrid author. So I am absolutely not against indie. I feel like I need to i need to say that.
00:32:08
Paul Regnier
I think what she's trying to say is secretly she knows indie way cooler and one day she hopes to be as cool as the indie authors out there.
00:32:12
Lindsay Franklin
yeah
00:32:17
Paul Regnier
um I will say, so so you may, ah editing, that's probably a really strong case because if you pick the wrong editor, like you mentioned vanity presses before.
00:32:31
Paul Regnier
And a friend of mine showed me like that his friend had just published a book, but he went through like this vanity press place that just ah oh, yeah, we'll do everything for you.
00:32:31
Lindsay Franklin
Mm-hmm.
00:32:41
Paul Regnier
Just like pay us 10 grand and we'll make it all happen. like We'll make your dream come true kind of thing. And I'm like, 10 grand? Like, that's insane. And then i got to see this book and it was so sad because it had supposedly gone through rounds of editing.
00:32:56
Paul Regnier
I found like typos all over the place and the sentence structure was just like all weird and Man, I felt so bad for this guy, but he'd already like invested the money.
00:33:07
Paul Regnier
So what are you going to say at that point?
00:33:07
Lindsay Franklin
Already done it.
00:33:09
Paul Regnier
So yeah, it's definitely author beware um of the vanity press route.
00:33:09
Lindsay Franklin
oh
00:33:15
Paul Regnier
um I would say like if you are going to take a path, just go strictly indie or strictly traditional. and And like you said, don't pay money up front. You shouldn't have to pay any money up front.
00:33:27
Paul Regnier
If a publisher says like, hey, you're great, you know work with us, but you you know you got to pay us some money first, like um that's your red flag to like get out.
00:33:32
Lindsay Franklin
Right. Don't do it. And it's because it's the worst of both worlds, right? Because we've been talking this whole episode about pros and cons of each.
00:33:38
Paul Regnier
Mm-hmm.
00:33:42
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:33:43
Lindsay Franklin
But when you sign up with a vanity publisher, it is the worst of indie and the worst of trad because you get these, you're paying a ton of money. You get a really tiny royalty percentage a lot of the time. Like the contracts read like a regular traditional publishing contract. And yet you're the one who fronted all the money.
00:34:01
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:34:02
Lindsay Franklin
And then the product isn't even good half the time or more than half the time.
00:34:05
Paul Regnier
Right. Yep.
00:34:08
Lindsay Franklin
And so you you don't have the control. you You're paying up front like you would for an indie title. I mean, for $10,000, you could go out if you knew where to find them and you know what...
00:34:17
Paul Regnier
Oh, and you could just do a stellar launch. Yeah.
00:34:20
Lindsay Franklin
Yes, you could hire great freelancers on your own for that. So if you have that 10 grand to invest, you could do indie, really like top tier freelancers all across the board for that.
00:34:28
Paul Regnier
Oh, oh my goodness. Yeah. And, and I didn't even mention this guy's book cover.
00:34:32
Lindsay Franklin
So yeah.
00:34:33
Paul Regnier
It was hideous. It was like, so sad.
00:34:35
Lindsay Franklin
Oh, it hurts my heart.
00:34:36
Paul Regnier
I'm like, Oh, all that money, you could have like gone to the best illustrator. So I want to quickly as, as time is ticking, I want to get in some good points for the indie because I feel like I'm, I'm on the ropes here a little bit. So I have to fight back.
00:34:49
Paul Regnier
um
00:34:49
Lindsay Franklin
Indie is great. We love Indie.
00:34:53
Paul Regnier
That's just, you're now, see, you're just digging it in. you're like, no, no, you're doing fine. Yeah. Don't patronize me. um So I'm going this is a strong point, I think, that I'm going to make here.
00:35:05
Paul Regnier
um Advertising. When it comes to advertising, so if you are making a small percentage, Now, one of the things I love is Amazon ads.
00:35:16
Paul Regnier
I love to do run Amazon ads, but the really important thing about Amazon ads is how much you are going to bid per click, because you usually do the cost per click.
00:35:17
Lindsay Franklin
Mm-hmm.
00:35:26
Paul Regnier
So you put an ad up there and then you set you know a cost, like let's just say 35 cents a click. Now, if I'm making, say, $4 on my book, on my ebook, you know, around or three something, let's say, I think that's more typical. If I have it priced at $4.99, I'll make like probably three bucks or three something.
00:35:50
Paul Regnier
um So if if I'm trying to crunch the numbers, and this is where all like the accountants can geek out, but if I'm doing 35 cents a click, right? Then I can really get into like, oh, how much like how much can I run this ad?
00:36:06
Paul Regnier
and get a sale or get page reads again that's another piece of that puzzle because you can earn if i'm running ads they don't have to necessarily buy it if they're kindle unlimited they could just start reading and i can make money because maybe they saw the ad and they said oh what's this book that looks cool i'm gonna go use some of my free reading time on that because i've already paid for it
00:36:16
Lindsay Franklin
Mm-hmm.
00:36:29
Paul Regnier
So that can be huge because you have a much larger margin to run more ads and get more attention and get more visibility on your book.
00:36:41
Paul Regnier
And the more clicks and the more purchases and the more page reads, the more your book lifts up in the rankings on Amazon. And all of a sudden you're on page one or you're on the bestseller list. And it's like,
00:36:51
Paul Regnier
Oh, dang, now it's snowballing. Now, if you're traditional, that's a lot harder because the margins, the profit margin is way smaller. Right?
00:37:00
Lindsay Franklin
Yes, absolutely.
00:37:01
Paul Regnier
and And I think, i'm I'm guessing probably a lot of traditionally published authors don't run ads because of that, because there's just not, it's ah very difficult to be profitable.
00:37:12
Paul Regnier
there. Because in the indie side, you can still be profitable. You know you just you know you might have to massage like the keywords you're using or you know whatever, you know however you're advertising to make it a profitable ad.
00:37:25
Paul Regnier
But you could do it. I mean, it's not like super hard. you know Maybe take a ah class or two on running Amazon ads and you got it. but um I think that's a pretty strong case.
00:37:36
Paul Regnier
and And you can see the numbers. Like let's say you have a publisher that's kind enough to say, oh yeah, you know what? We are gonna run ads for your book. And you're like, cool. Like, oh, how's it doing today? Like, oh, we'll send you a quarterly report.
00:37:51
Lindsay Franklin
Yep.
00:37:51
Paul Regnier
right Whereas if you're indie, you can check that thing every day, every hour, if you want to be obsessive and just like, see, hey, I just started this ad. How's it doing today?
00:38:02
Paul Regnier
Oh, okay.
00:38:02
Lindsay Franklin
Yep.
00:38:03
Paul Regnier
Maybe I can tweak that up a couple. you know I'm going to take it from 35 cents to 37 cents. I'm going to see what that does. Like, oh, I'm going to do, and then you can set like daily, like how much do you want to spend on this ad today?
00:38:15
Paul Regnier
So you can tweak all these little things in just like into this finely tuned ad running. And and so I think that's pretty huge on the indie side of things to be able to be profitable, get visibility.
00:38:26
Lindsay Franklin
It's true.
00:38:30
Paul Regnier
so what are you going with that, huh, Lindsay? Huh? Huh?
00:38:33
Lindsay Franklin
I am going to completely agree with you because because that's really, really true. And you've also kind of hit on, again, one of those things that that bugs me about the traditional industry is the opacity of it, where you can't, as the author, you can't always see into the process. You don't know what's happening in real time.
00:38:57
Paul Regnier
Mm-hmm.
00:38:57
Lindsay Franklin
the best that we can hope to do if, you know, we know there's some kind of sale on Amazon or something like that, or we did a big marketing push, we can look at our ranking for that book, you know, that info is publicly available, or you can see certain things in your author central account, which you can have as a um traditional, traditional author. um so you can sometimes have a little bit of insight, but it is nowhere near The kind of tools that an indie author has, it's nowhere near the level of data that the publisher has. And I'm a data nerd. And so this is something i geek out about for all of our authors. So I do this on behalf of, I don't know, how many authors do we have at Enclave? Like 60 or something like that.
00:39:39
Lindsay Franklin
um where I'm looking at all of our numbers and like, okay, we had this little push that we did over here.
00:39:39
Paul Regnier
Mm-hmm.
00:39:45
Lindsay Franklin
We featured this author on Instagram today, or we put their paperbacks in the paperback sale over the summer or something like, what are their numbers looking like?
00:39:55
Lindsay Franklin
Are these marketing efforts that we have? Like, are they are they having an impact? But the authors do not have insight into any of that. And We just don't have the bandwidth as a publisher to be able to have those conversations. Because like I said, i mean, we're pretty small with 60 so authors. I can't think how many. I know we have 100 and something titles. But ah you know we're I just don't have the bandwidth to talk to all of the authors because we've got a bunch of different things happening at all times. So they get their quarterly royalty statements and they can see if there's been a bump over the previous quarter or a bump over the same quarter last year or whatever.
00:40:37
Lindsay Franklin
But it does not give you the real-time feedback on your marketing efforts, any advertising that you're doing. And so that's very frustrating as an author to not know. a lot of the marketing feels like you are throwing things at the wall, seeing if the spaghetti sticks,
00:40:56
Lindsay Franklin
And then sometimes you don't even know, well, was it that spaghetti or was it that other handful that I threw the week late, you know week after, because you're supposed to be doing different things and trying different stuff all the time.
00:41:02
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:41:06
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:41:06
Lindsay Franklin
So, yeah.
00:41:07
Paul Regnier
so and that And that's the other thing too. So would you say like um the quarterly report is pretty typical as far as what the authors get? like As far as they're knowing what's going on with like bumps in sales or whatever, they really typically they only know once a quarter what's what's going on.
00:41:27
Lindsay Franklin
Yes, quarterly is very standard. I have even seen every six months in some traditional contracts, which I don't...
00:41:32
Paul Regnier
Oh my goodness.
00:41:35
Lindsay Franklin
you can't you can't even do anything really with that data. Like you just get a really broad overview of like, okay, this is what my book is doing this half of the year.
00:41:39
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:41:45
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:41:45
Lindsay Franklin
It's not helpful as an author. So in those cases, I just hope that those publishers are really showing up for their authors on the marketing side and that they're just handling all of it. And that's why they report so infrequently.
00:41:55
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:41:58
Lindsay Franklin
um But yeah, quarterly is very
Real-time Marketing Adjustments
00:42:01
Lindsay Franklin
standard. And um even, yeah,
00:42:03
Paul Regnier
So here's the thing about, ah sorry, go ahead.
00:42:04
Lindsay Franklin
yeah No, I was just going to say that there is even a delay sometimes. So as the publisher, we don't get our payments from certain distributors or retailers until a month or two after, like there's a They have to process all their accounting and then they pay us and then our accountant processes and then pays the author.
00:42:22
Lindsay Franklin
So there can be delays, significant delays, even when you're getting the quarterly statement. It might not reflect the campaign that you ran two months ago. That might be on your next quarterly statement.
00:42:32
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:42:34
Lindsay Franklin
So it's frustrating.
00:42:35
Paul Regnier
yeah so so that Yeah, and that's the thing. it It's been a while. I've been doing indie so long I forgot ah about some of that. So that's the thing too, like, cause I mentioned Amazon ads, how you can see like, you know, daily, even hourly results.
00:42:49
Paul Regnier
But even if you're not running ads, let's say you do some sort of promotion. Let's say it's like a social media promotion or, um you know, who knows what, like, let's say you just did a book launch or whatever.
00:43:00
Lindsay Franklin
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:43:00
Paul Regnier
And you're really curious, like, oh, how did it do on the first week?
00:43:00
Lindsay Franklin
Mm-hmm.
00:43:03
Paul Regnier
and And yeah, you could probably, if you have a nice enough publisher, you might be able to call them directly or email them, like, hey, how's it doing or whatever. But like again, on the indie side of things, like you do some promotion or some launch or whatever it is, you can kind of see like right away, like, how am I doing? like Is this effective?
00:43:22
Paul Regnier
Like maybe I should tweak it.
00:43:23
Lindsay Franklin
you
00:43:24
Paul Regnier
Like, oh, let me do it a little bit differently this time. You know, um this week I'm going to try this ad or this week I'm going to try this promotion or this social media thing. And you can really get that like real time data on what's happening.
00:43:38
Paul Regnier
that's That's pretty powerful, right? From a marketing perspective.
00:43:41
Lindsay Franklin
Very. It's very powerful. And in theory, you know, every traditional publisher would have a whole marketing department with multiple staff members, people working in advertising and sales and and on the marketing side.
00:43:55
Lindsay Franklin
And they'd be doing all the A-B testing and the looking at all of those analytics.
00:43:58
Paul Regnier
Right. Yeah.
00:44:00
Lindsay Franklin
But the reality is that publishing has been hit so hard by the changes that have come to our industry over the last 20 years or so.
00:44:11
Lindsay Franklin
And ah they are often running even the big houses on really shoestring budgets. And so a lot of these like in-house roles are eliminated at this point or they're, you know, the, it's like a skeleton crew ah working in certain departments.
00:44:18
Paul Regnier
yeah
00:44:29
Lindsay Franklin
It's happened on the editorial side as well, where they're hiring out more freelancers. Like when I was freelancing, I worked, freelance jobs for some bigger name houses where it's like they're in-house editors They don't have somebody there you know sitting in the office copyediting manuscripts all day.
00:44:49
Lindsay Franklin
They're hiring that work out because it is more cost effective to do that. And sometimes we think that publishers are just sitting on piles of money and that's why they they pay authors so little.
00:44:54
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:44:59
Lindsay Franklin
And that's not the case. A lot of publishers are like just trying to keep the lights on and just not completely fold in this kind of Amazon era that we're in.
00:45:01
Paul Regnier
right
00:45:10
Lindsay Franklin
um It has changed things a lot. So in theory, there should be marketing people doing all of these things indies are able to do for themselves. Publishers should have somebody who is doing that for all of the books, all of the authors.
00:45:22
Lindsay Franklin
But there's also a shelf life on books when you're dealing with ah a big back catalog and you're dealing with so many different titles and, you know, 20, 50 releases each month.
00:45:36
Lindsay Franklin
um How, even if you have full-time dedicated staff, how closely can they look at any one book for any length of time? That's the other question.
00:45:46
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:45:47
Lindsay Franklin
And so there is so much more insight and control and sort of intention that you can put behind it as an indie author. So I agree with you Point to the indie side.
00:46:02
Paul Regnier
All right. So to round it out, because I think we we've maybe hit a draw at this point. um I think, again, like we said at the beginning, I think a lot of it comes down to personality, right?
00:46:15
Paul Regnier
So like for me to know to know those numbers like daily and to get into that, oh, Oh, yeah, cool.
00:46:15
Lindsay Franklin
Yeah.
00:46:21
Paul Regnier
It's doing this. And I want to run this ad and I want to do this. promote And to kind of see that interaction, that's exciting for me. And I think it's exciting for a lot of indie authors. But there's some authors that would say like, oh, my gosh, that sounds like a nightmare. I don't want to worry about all that stuff. Like, I just want to go write a book.
00:46:38
Paul Regnier
Like, that's why I do this, because I want to write. I don't want to worry about all that. marketing stuff. And if I have a publisher that's doing that and they have professionals like in a marketing team, but in an ideal world anyways, they have a big team or something.
00:46:52
Paul Regnier
um But maybe they even have just like you said, like contract people doing it. um they Some people would just want that. And they they look at that as a big positive. Yeah, get it off my plate and someone else do it because I don't want to worry about that piece of the pie.
00:47:08
Paul Regnier
um So yeah, personality is ah is a big part of it.
Concluding Thoughts: Personal Preferences in Publishing
00:47:12
Paul Regnier
So I would say like that's a big indicator on what you wanna do like as an author, like what direction you wanna go.
00:47:20
Lindsay Franklin
Absolutely. And if you if you love the idea of being a business owner, essentially, being in business for yourself as a publisher, as well as being the artist who creates the art that you are you know putting out there into the world, then idea. Indie is probably going to be a really good choice for you. And like I said, I'm a data person. And so I think this is a huge reason why Indie does appeal to me. And it's always been on my radar. And I'm like, yeah, hybrid, because I want to kind of structure my career to have the best of both worlds where I can leverage some of these major benefits of being an Indie and be in control of my advertising and those pushes. And that will then support what I'm doing on the trad side.
00:48:03
Lindsay Franklin
And vice versa. So I've got my team over here, you know, working to sell my traditional books, and then I can have kind of that insight and that control over on the other side, and these two things can support each other. so I think that that can work really well for authors as well, who might be like me where I'm kind of in the middle. I want to have some of that control.
00:48:25
Lindsay Franklin
I am a business person. I like to be in business for myself. And so Indy appeals to me. I also love to have the safety of a traditional platform and the team that is behind that, because it is different than having a team of freelancers working with you.
00:48:42
Lindsay Franklin
um the investment is different. the The emotional investment, aside from just the monetary investment, because that's also significant. But um like at Enclave, i care about every single book launch. And I know like our marketing director, our executive editor, like we care about every single book that is coming out, every single book in our back catalog. Like these are our books too.
00:49:06
Lindsay Franklin
And we
00:49:06
Paul Regnier
Yep.
00:49:07
Lindsay Franklin
want them to succeed. We want our authors to do well. We want our titles to do well. So I love having that support as well. That appeals to a different side of my personality. And so, yeah, if you are the type where you really want that kind of ah publishing family or that community ah that is invested in all the ways in your book, then traditional might be a good fit for you. And I would also say, be really careful about which house you choose to sign with because they are not all created equal.
00:49:41
Lindsay Franklin
And not every house has that same kind of like ah the same level of investment.
00:49:41
Paul Regnier
Right. Right. Yeah.
00:49:47
Lindsay Franklin
We'll just put it that way. Or that same kind of like collaborative, cooperative,
00:49:48
Paul Regnier
right
00:49:52
Lindsay Franklin
family type environment, it it's not everywhere. um So you do need to be savvy as an author and make sure that you're not, again, getting kind of the worst of all worlds where, you know, you're not having to pay any money up front, but you don't have any insight and you don't have a cheerleader for your book and everything is sad and you make, you know, 30 cents a month on your books and everything's terrible.
00:49:56
Paul Regnier
yeah
00:50:13
Lindsay Franklin
You don't want to end up in that situation. Yeah.
00:50:16
Paul Regnier
Right. Yes. No, I get it. i totally get that appeal because it cause it is nice because cause um writing can be a very solitary journey. So it is nice to have people in your corner, you know, cheerleading for you. That is nice.
00:50:32
Paul Regnier
But yeah. But you know us indie people look at it, that it's just ah they're just slowing us down. Come on, we want to launch our book now. But I think that's a good that's a good place to end.
00:50:41
Lindsay Franklin
Fair. Fair.
00:50:45
Paul Regnier
Good conversation. And I hope that this has proved helpful to those that are considering like which path they want to take. um Because sometimes it does boil down to you know a personality.
00:50:58
Paul Regnier
um But I think the more you learn about both, it it gives you a better chance to make an informed decision and something that'll work the best for you as an author. So, so there you go. And I think any, any closing words on this segment?
00:51:15
Lindsay Franklin
I just think that there is no wrong answer.
00:51:19
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:51:20
Lindsay Franklin
That's what I want to kind of, you know, close with is that there are just a lot of different paths.
00:51:20
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:51:25
Lindsay Franklin
And you may have noticed that as Paul and I discuss these ah different different elements of traditional and indie, there are a ton of different indie strategies within kind of the indie umbrella and there are a ton of different types of traditional houses underneath that umbrella. So there are so many different paths that we as authors have to choose from. And there is not a wrong answer except maybe vanity publishing. Um, that is probably the wrong answer.
00:51:54
Paul Regnier
Yes. Yep.
00:51:54
Lindsay Franklin
Sorry. Um, but you know, there's not a wrong answer. There's just what is right for you and your personality and your goals and your bandwidth and your budget and just all of those things.
00:52:00
Paul Regnier
ye
00:52:05
Lindsay Franklin
So, um, That's what we hope to dig into kind of the nitty gritty of a lot of these different elements of publishing to maybe help people better answer that question of, you know, am I equipped to select a good editor?
00:52:20
Lindsay Franklin
And, and you know, how how will I tackle that advertising piece of being an indie author? Like we are excited to share our wisdom and our experience to help authors who are just diving in to make those decisions wisely.
00:52:35
Paul Regnier
Definitely, definitely. 100% agree. Hey, we found a point of agreement in our versus.
00:52:40
Lindsay Franklin
Yay. yeah
00:52:43
Paul Regnier
All right, everyone.
00:52:43
Lindsay Franklin
Big adversaries, as you can tell, just fighting constantly.
00:52:47
Paul Regnier
Constant fights. yeah Well, thank you, everybody, for listening. Hope you found this helpful. And we will see you next time.