I was just watching The Alliance of Independent Authors Q&A on Facebook and it brought a question to mind… ALLI stated that publishers would be looking for confirmed sales of at least 50,000 of my independently published book (Fiction) before they would even consider adding me to their Author list and publishing me on their label!
My question is; why on earth would I give them the rights to my book when I’ve already done the work that a publishing house would do? 50,000 books sold is a solid platform on which to build, so why would I want to give away a large chunk of my profits to an organisation who have shown no previous interest? 🤔🤔🤔
- Tony Milligan Quite so. They want the oil without drilling the well.
Tony, If I sell 50,000 independently it ain’t going to happen. I saw a successful ‘Hybrid’ author (independent and with a publisher) when I attended an Amazon KDP school in Glasgow. He told the audience (us) that his publisher sold 10,000 paperback copies of his book with ASDA. Sounds great? He received £200 from the publisher for that sale… If he’d sold them (full-price self-published) through Amazon it would have been in the order of £20,000… So… If a publisher wants to take a chance with me now, then they’ll deserve their reward, but after 50,000 sales? No chance!
Kenneth J. Matthews 