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Traditional Publishing vs. Self-Publishing: What's The Best Route For Entrepreneurs

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Have you ever read a business book and thought, “I could write that,” or imagined publishing a business book that would catapult you to the front of your industry? You are in good company. Whether to help lift their business profile, get more speaking opportunities or become industry trendsetters, many entrepreneurs wish to publish.

If you ever decide to take it a step further, you’ll likely compare self-publishing and traditional publishing as I did a few months ago. I checked in with fellow entrepreneur Dan Emery, of New York City Guitar School, who has self-published several guitar books. “I decided to use my own lesson plans instead of published lesson plans and somewhere around student one thousand, I decided to turn it into a book,” says Dan.

He was eager to design a curriculum that reflected the school’s uniquely friendly and positive approach to learning guitar that combines having fun with the science of deliberate practice. He quickly found out, however, that no publishers were interested in the book. That’s when he decided to publish it himself, which has turned into a successful endeavor for him.

When I first decided to write a book — about women entrepreneurs who are running multi-million dollar businesses — I wasn’t going to consider traditional publishing. But I went for a run with my old friend Paul Greenberg, who is an award-winning published author. He expressed outrage at my plan while we jogged along the Hudson. “You can’t pay to write a book! You should get paid!” he admonished. I protested that I was not an actual author, like he was, and would never get a meeting at a publishing company, but he insisted I should at least try the traditional way before going the self-publishing route.

Paul put me in touch with his former editor, who took a personal interest in my topic. She then offered to connect me with three of the top literary agents in New York. To my delight and surprise, all three said they wanted the book. That’s when I knew I was on to something. I chose as a literary agent Zoe Pagnamenta, an entrepreneur herself who owns a boutique agency where all her authors get terrific individual attention, and we were off to the races. We set to work putting together a 40-page proposal, which I wrote over my Christmas holiday last year.

Dan’s process was, of course, different from mine. His enthusiasm for his decision to self-publish is clearly apparent when he describes the process. “One of our students who is a Grammy award-winning album art designer designed the book; a teacher who also writes for Guitar Player magazine edited; another teacher who is an amazing photographer took the pictures; and students and teachers looked over everything and gave us comments. We printed on super high-quality paper and created not just a book but an art piece. We sold a couple thousand copies on our own through Amazon and then we signed a distribution deal with Carl Fischer Music, which enabled our book to be placed in music stores, as well. It’s now one of the best-selling beginners guitar books in America. The book has turned into a whole new business for us. We now have four books, and other schools and teachers are using our books in their classes.”

Dan’s determination to self-publish was also strengthened by his discovery that printing his own books could be very inexpensive per unit. Dan’s advice to those interested in self-publishing is to first ask the question, “What does a publisher provide?” Dan noticed that “publishers are already looking for someone who has an audience – but if you can develop your own audience, it doesn’t really make sense to use a publisher.”

He is currently celebrating the third printing of Guitar for Absolute Beginners, and hopes to have a dozen titles out by the middle of 2015. He adds that another huge advantage of self-publishing now is that you have a tremendous amount of control over the size of the print run. You can start small and build up as demand grows.

But for me, it was the traditional route. Zoe set up a series of meetings for me with editors and ten days later, two of the publishers offered me a contract with an advance. I am currently writing the book for one of the major publishing companies and I have an agent, an editor, and deals with publishers in the UK and the Netherlands. In my case, a publishing partner made the most sense as I wanted the support, the advance and the teams the publisher provides (e.g. graphic, editorial, PR, etc). My editor is pouring over my drafts and she and her team will help the book get press coverage and speaking opportunities for me.

If you do want to try to sell your book to a traditional publisher, you must be forewarned that this industry is trying to reinvent itself but it still has old ways and set habits. For example, it’s nearly impossible to get your manuscript read by an editor without having a literary agent send it in, and the timelines are still painfully slow, especially by entrepreneur standards — my book will take 10-12 months to produce and ship.

So if you do get around to writing that book I hope this comparison chart will help you decide which is the right road to take for you and your work of (business) art. Whichever route you choose, good luck!