Trad

Since I “restarted” my interest in writing… kind of late in life, I also was late on picking up on the frission between “trad” publishing and the burgeoning “self” publishing industry.

When I first thought about being a writer many, many years ago, this wasn’t even a real option – of course, you could also only submit manuscripts in hard copy then, too, since email wasn’t even “a thing.” Maybe that’s why I never seriously considered going the “self” publishing route, although it has worked – and worked successfully – for many. I think part of me was simply “hard wired” to focus on the traditional route, and I’ve been lucky in that regard, and thrilled with how things have turned out and are going. However, as I’ve gotten a little deeper into the professional side of being an author, I can understand the attraction of self-publishing – that full control over every aspect of putting your work out into the world; including a work that might not, on first blush, be the sort of thing that traditional publishers flock to. If you know what you’re doing, put in the time (and regardless of subject matter, have written a good book to begin with), I think you can find your audience going solo. But for me, the keys were (a) I truly had no idea how to get started, and (b) did not want to invest the time in learning that aspect of the writing/publishing business. I wanted to spend my time writing the stories, not worrying about how to put “the book” together; how to get it marketed and publicized, and then ultimately distributed and sold. My hat’s off to anyone who has walked that path, and they well deserve any and all success that they have. It’s possible there will come a time when I might as well, but that’s still a ways down the road.

A lot of attention is focused on those few self-published authors who have broken “big,” Hugh Howey and E.L James to name a few, just like a lot of attention is focused on the few enormously successful traditionally published authors. In both venues, there are very good writers honing their craft and putting out great books. Neither path has a monopoly on great stories and great writing.