Traditional vs. Hybrid vs. Self-Publishing in 2025: What Every Non-Fiction Author Needs to Know

All right. Hello and welcome. If you want to publish a book now, you have to prepare to navigate the jungle of publishing paths. Self publish, do you go with a hybrid publisher? Do you go traditional publishing? Each path has its pros, cons, pitfalls, all the fun. So that's what we're going to cover today. We're going to kind of go through, I've really taken them into five categories and we'll go through each and explore the trade offs that you'll be making. Because there isn't a path that is right for every person, which is why I think it can be such a labyrinth that you're navigating. But before we get into that, I definitely want to talk a little bit about some updates that have happened over on the Amazon side. And of course, as always, we want to say hello to the people who have tuned in. So it looks like Henning is here. Welcome from southern Sweden. Oh, that's fantastic. Fabulous. Great to have you here. And of course Angela's here behind the scenes. I don't know if you were here on Saturday, but we had a fantastic deep dive. Angela can drop the link in the comments and you can check it out if you missed it. But our deep dive, we had four of our book launchers authors here sharing their journey and it was fantastic because they're all at different phases of their post launch life and all have had different but cool experiences as authors and they were very open and shared a lot of great stuff. So hopefully you, if you didn't, if you didn't join us live, you check out the replay because it will be well, well worth your time. Michelle's here as well and Jason from Oklahoma and Jules, Jules, that's my nickname too. But this is Jules from the UK and Gary from Utah. And Henning missed Saturday. You can still watch it so you can catch it. And Michelle said it was terrific. Still thinking about it, especially what Scott said about messaging. So Angela's put it in the comments so you can catch up if you missed it. All right, so Amazon's new read sample feature, it has gone live today. I think today is the 15th right of April. So it is live today. And what it is is it's a read sample feature for ebook pre orders. And by the way, there's been some weirdness around a few things have come up about paperback pre orders. And I've said this for quite some time that I fully expect this year to be the year that Amazon rolls out print paperback for a print this right, print paperback pre sales because you know to date if you want to sell your book before it launches and a print version you are going to have to use IngramSpark if you're self publishing and that's we do it with our clients is we upload it to English Spark for print pre sale. But there's been some weirdness. There's been a few things and there's been more rumblings than usual and so I'm, I've, I've said for a while that I thought this was the year, but I think, I think we're getting closer. But no, that's not what this is. Their introduction of read sample for pre orders. It wasn't available for pre order prior so it's, this is ultimately I think a good addition. But what you want to be aware of is that on pre order customers will see will be able to or are able to as of today access a sample of your book up to 10% and this should increase your interest and have higher pre order sales. But what you want to be certain of is that your manuscript is uploaded and finalized in accordance with KDP's Pre Order Submission deadlines so that you can take advantage of this feature. But also you know, if you're somebody who has previously uploaded a, a just like a, a dummy draft just to get the pre orders going, you know this, this isn't going to work. So you'll want to get in there and make sure that you have the proper book in there for pre order when you do this. So overall a good thing but just something to be aware of doesn't impact our clients. So our clients watching this, don't worry. We've always, we've always kind of handled this in, in accordance with how it all, you know, with best practices but also kind of how we've handled it will work just with this update. But also Amazon's been rolling out some new AI tools that I want to talk about and one of them is on the product side. So it is not on the KDP side. But I want to mention it because I think this is coming to kdp. There's also a couple trends that I am watching closely and one of them is that I'm watching SEO dwindle in importance and context and the content increasing in importance. And this is one of the situations where I believe this is true and I like I said, it's only available on the product side for sellers on Amazon. It's not on KDP yet but I am certain it will come. And what it is is they have created a high quality product listing and it just helps you. It basically drafts a listing for your product with compelling titles. It has bullet points and descriptions and all you have to do is provide a rough outline of what it is and it reduces the need for a bunch of data entry and it allows quicker and more efficient listing creation. So I could totally see this happening with a good book description. Having the ability for Amazon to just produce the optimal book description. And why I say SEO is dwindling is because AI is using large language models to infer and enrich these product listings. And that means that you can just kind of describe a table and if this specifications are listed in diameter, it's going to know it's a round table just as an example. So you can imagine what that's going to do for books. And I think it's going to be here soon. And and the other piece I wanted to mention, I don't know if you've played with Rufus. Rufus is Amazon's AI search partner. Rufus is not SM. Rufus is not very good at this. ChatGPT Claude. They're much better at recommending books for you. And part of the reason why Rufus is not smart is Rufus doesn't access your search history or your buying history. I don't know why it's a product on Amazon's page, so I'm not quite sure why it doesn't access my buying history. You know, on the one hand I'm like, great, it's not accessing my buying history. But then on the other hand, like Rufus is kind of useless to me. So I asked Rufus to recommend books I don't read not I don't read fiction books almost at all. And it recommended 10 fiction books. I'm like, Rufus, why are you recommending fiction? I don't read fiction. Rufus told me that it doesn't access my history. So then I said I want nonfiction recommendations. And then it gave me the most generic, boring list of books like Becoming by Michelle Obama and like Educated like they were old books. They've been out for a while. Yes, they're bestsellers. Yes, they've sold millions of copies. But so I was like, why are you recommending these? And Rufus is like, well, they're the highest reviewed and they're the most searched and they still sell well. So I mention all this because playing with Rufus and starting to understand how Rufus is recommending books and why I think is important and it starts to show you where search is going and how I think metadata like keywords and even categorization of Your book is going to dwindle in importance. Now, that may or may not be a good thing. If you're somebody who has really thrived and survived or done more than survive, but you've thrived with the metadata, this could be problematic for you. But anyways, it's just an interesting time and I think it's really, really important that we're writing really great books because if you're not and all of these things are coming into play and it's making recommendations based on reviews and the content of your book. Yeah, you can see where I'm going. All right, that's not what we're talking about today. But I could not start today without talking about it because it is fascinating to watch these developments in place. Okay, so we're talking self publishing, hybrid publishing, traditional publishing, and of course, within each category there are subcategories. I'm not going to get into the labyrinth in great detail, but I wanted to. This came up for me because in the last month or so I've had a handful of conversations with people who have made it very clear they want a publisher, they feel better having a publisher. And so they're willing to pay in some cases even more money than the cost of our services just to have a publisher's name on the spine of their book. And, and I feel as though people aren't fully understanding the trade offs when they're making this decision. Now sometimes I think maybe they do get it and they've made, they've chosen that for a very specific reason. And that's okay. You know, I don't think, you know, as much as I am definitely a, an advocate and a huge, huge, you know, promoter of self publishing because of the, you know, the rights and the control and all of those things. It is not the ideal path for every single author. And so that's kind of what I want to touch on today and kind of go into that. All right, so we still have more people saying hello, Joy's here. Oh, second act success book launch coming up. Deborah Ann is here. Kj, aj, Bill Miller. Ashley is tuning in from Georgia usa. So thank you everybody. Great to have you here. All right, I'm going to take my screen off right now so that we'll just go to a simple little logo in the corner. Okay. So just kind of diving into it. The first category is control. Okay. So control is something I'm passionate about and it's not just control of rights, although that is an important piece. And this is where I think a lot of People choosing Hybrid are not understanding the trade off. And this was a conversation I've had with a couple people in the last month. So, first of all, with self publishing, you have full creative and content control. For better or for worse, you ultimately are in charge of choosing your title, cover, the structure, all of those things. You own all your rights, so you don't have to, you know, somebody's not choosing whether you do an audiobook or not. You can sell your international rights, you can sell rights to the audio version only if you want. You can license it to become part of a TV show or you can do courses. There's, it's yours. You can do whatever you want with it. You can choose your team, so you have full control over who you are working with on your book and you're in charge of launch, timing, pricing, formats, all those things. It's a powerful, beautiful place to be, but it can also be a little intimidating, which is why, you know, definitely pick up Self Publish and Succeed. My book, we're working on a second edition, but the, you know, 80% of the content is going to stay exactly the same and the fundamentals have stayed exactly the same. So Self Publish and Succeed is definitely a resource. Of course, being here in our school community, all of those things are going to help you navigate this, this world because it can be a little overwhelming having all the control and all the choices. Okay, hybrid, you do have creative freedom. It's usually within their set system, but it depends on the hybrid. In some cases, hybrids don't do much for editing. They'll put a cover on it, but the COVID can be good or it cannot be good. Depends on the company. You will retain either partial or full rights. Again, read your contracts very, very carefully. But they have distribution control. And part of the reason they retain distribution control is because most hybrids will be basically keeping some of your book proceeds. So some of the contracts will keep $2 or some will keep a dollar for every book sold. And so what that means is you're not going to have access to the accounts, right? You're not going to be able to easily log into your KDP dashboard because you don't have one and change anything behind the scenes. You know, you're not going to be able to run Amazon ads as easily because you're not going to have access to all the tools. And you also don't have instant data. Right. One of the amazing things of self publishing is the data you get and the decisions you can make from that data. Right. One of the things I talked about in the might have been the 2025 kind of self publishing trends or, you know, one of that video, one of the earlier videos I did at the start of this year was talking about how data driven decision making is what's going to separate authors who are succeeding from those who are wondering why nothing's happening with their book. And so one of the challenges you'll face if you choose hybrid is that lack of data. They'll give you sales reports, how fast they give them to you. I don't think it's going to be fast enough for most people if they are running ads or doing kind of promotions and trying to understand what's working or not. You, you, you have to use their team. But like I said, some hybrids provide a full team and some don't. So it'll be, you know, different there. And one of the pieces, and some hybrids are better at this than others, is you don't end up getting your files. And this is a piece a lot of authors don't pay attention to until it's a problem. What I mean by that is when you self publish, it's all yours, right? You're going to get your indesign files even if you don't have the software to read it. You're going to get, you know, you'll get all your files, the editors, all those things. So when your book is out and two years later you decide, hey, I'd like to do a second edition or oh my gosh, I mentioned so and so and I do not want them in my book for whatever reason. Now you have to go back to the hybrid, tell them you want the change, wait for them to update the files, then have them re upload it. When you own it yourself, you can either make the change real quick and update it yourself, or you can quickly hire somebody to make that quick change because you've got all the files and, and again. Or if you want to do a second edition or add to it, all of these things you're quick and nimble and able to do with Hybrid if you haven't gotten those files. The other thing that's happened is we've had hybrid publishers go out of business and we've had to help clients get their book back. And so while they have full rights to their book and they can republish it, they now need a letter showing that the hybrid's gone out of business and that they can you, they do in fact have all the rights. They also have to get those files and often then re upload the book. And if they, if they can't get those files, we have to recreate those files for them. So I could go on and on because I've seen so many issues come up that nobody could see. I shouldn't say nobody could see coming, but the author didn't see coming when they chose that path. Traditional publishing is the least control. The publisher owns the rights and sometimes there's a period of time where they own the rights. Sometimes it's the life of copyright. Again, read the contracts very, very carefully. You may get a cover and a title you hate. This has happened to quite a few of my friends. Hate might be a strong word for some of them, but, you know, dislike or wouldn't have chosen were words that I have heard. You also could get an editor that will reshape your content into something the publisher has deemed more marketable. But it, it changes your message and ultimately that is where they have final say. The publishing timeline, pricing and formats are out of your hands. Right. You do not have control over any of those pie. So really, for me, control equals flexibility equals the ability to align your book with your brand and your business goals. And so for any author using their book as a tool, I think giving up control is a pretty big trade off. So that's why I kind of spent a little bit of time on here emphasizing it because I also think it's the one people don't know about or don't pay attention to in the beginning. So. All right, I see some comments here. Okay, so there's. Okay, I'll come back to that. And Kevin's here. Sorry you're late. It's okay. Thanks for being here anyways. All right, so I'll come back to questions. So Misty, Angela has starred your question. So she knows and she'll come on a little later and share all the questions. If anybody else has questions, let me know and I'll pop over just to make sure. Or I'll pop in and check the comments to see if there's anything that needs to be clarified. But we'll get there. Okay, so next up, let's talk about revenue money. One of, one of the fun parts about being an author, it's kind of like icing on a cake. It's just an extra and it's delightful. So self publishing, you get paid the most per book sold, full stop. Now, you are paying up front for the expenses of producing the book, but for the lifetime of that book, you are making the profits. And that's great, especially when you, you know, have Long, long term, lifelong sales consistency with your book. It's great. And it also gives you the flexibility to make deals with people you know, say you are going to speak somewhere and your book sells for $19. They want to buy copies for everybody in the room and you, you. But they want a deal, right? They don't want to pay $19. So now you can sell it for $12 and still make $6 per every book sold. If you are traditionally published, you're probably paying $12, maybe $11 for that book from your publisher. So now you're selling it for cost and not getting a profit. With hybrid, you're probably paying seven, maybe $8 for that book. So your profits are smaller. Just as an example. It's just easier to do things with it. And also you can give it away for free. That's one thing I do. Self publish and succeed. If you're interested in writing a book and you want help, you can get our audiobook for free at book launchers.com forward/free audio. So I don't often promote that particular one, but it's there and I give it away for free, just like I give myself promote and succeed away in audiobook format for free as well. Now, hybrid, you generally pay a little less upfront for a hybrid versus self publish, right? And, and that can be appealing for some. So where, when you're self publishing, you might spend, you know, 15,000 or 10,000 on the journey. A hybrid might offer you six or 7,000. Might, you know, depends on the hybrid. Depends on what you're getting with it. Usually with six or seven, you're still paying for your own editing, but it varies. But ultimately you're either doing a 50, 50 split of the royalties or the proceeds from the sale, or like I said, they're taking a dollar or $2 off of from every book sold after print costs. So they, they are just getting more money and that's why they might charge you a little less. And, and again, I mentioned the challenge of not actually knowing exactly what you're selling when you're selling them in. And so it can be a little unclear and it can be harder to make decisions. Traditional publishing, you know, I basically always tell you tell everyone if you're not getting a decent advance, then I want to understand why you would give up all your rights and make almost nothing on every book you sell just to have a publisher's name. It does not make sense. But if you are getting a sizable advance and there's a lot of commitment on their side for marketing or for whatever's important to you, whether it's bookstores and so on. Then, then you know, this path might make sense for you, but are going to make less money per book sold. And if you get an advance, you have to earn out that advance first. So typically you're looking at making somewhere around 80 cents to a dollar per book sold. And so if you get paid $100,000 advance, you have to sell at least a hundred thousand books. The good news is if they're giving you $100,000 advance, they're very confident or fairly confident. And they're also, they're fairly confident you are going to sell a lot of books. But they also are going to put more marketing but more marketing emphasis behind you. When they don't pay an advance or they pay a very small advance, you can rest assured marketing is going to be 100% on your shoulders. And now you're 100% responsible for that. And making 80 cents per book sold, that's a tough trade off. That's why I kind of say that you really want to understand why it's important to you and what you're getting out of the deal. And you also will almost never run your own. You won't run Amazon ads for your book this way because there's just no profit in it and you don't get any data. You also will be lucky to get a report twice a year to understand. Well, I should say that you'll be lucky to get a report monthly. Most of them will provide reports every six months. Some provide quarterly reports with your sales and revenue earnings. And so generally speaking, you know, I kind of look at this as I'd rather have the whole cookie. I don't want crumbs, but that's me. There's perspectives and reasons to go different routes. Right? Okay, the third, the third piece is speed. This is really, really important to understand. Self publishing can be the fastest option. I do encourage you not to think of it as my book is done. It's going to be out next month though because I still going back to what I started off talking about today. Quality matters. And it's mattering. It's mattering more. I think that's a correct sentence. It sounded weird in my head. But quality matters and it matters. It will matter even more with more AI A, being used to produce books, but also B being used to discover people's next reads. Producing a top quality book with great context. Really clear writing is vital. So that means editors are your best friend. Writing a book with Your humanity front and center is also really, really important. So you do want to spend time on editing. So I do recommend, even though self publishing is the fastest option, you expect it to do six months or longer for your book to be out. You know, to go through the editing process and produce the best book you can. I have a video. Angela will frantically find it on self publishing timeline. I believe that's what it is. It just came out two, three weeks ago. I'm not sure exactly timing, but it walks you through kind of a year. You finished writing your book, now what happens? And it's kind of that year after that you finish writing your book, what happens? But ultimately, the cool part about self publishing is you don't have a gatekeeper. Nobody's sitting there going, you have to do this. And you move at your own pace. One of the reasons some clients love book launchers and some don't love book launchers is because you've got somebody there going, hey, I'm waiting. We're ready to move your book to the next phase. For some people, that can be a huge benefit. For others, it can be stressful and it can be, you know, we have some people who go, just, just leave me alone. You'll hear from me when I'm ready for you. But you know, generally speaking, we're kind of going, hey, you want to hit that launch date? Let's get your edits, move it to the next phase, let's get your cover finalized, all those things. Hybrid is kind of an in between traditional and self publishing. And again, the range of what hybrids do is very wide. So like I said, some aren't even editing your book. And so, you know, being mindful in understanding what is and isn't included. But, you know, it can, it can happen at a similar pace to self publishing or a slightly longer pace, but ultimately you are on their schedule. And I have heard from quite a few people who have been working with them that, you know, they won't hear from an editor for a month or longer. So they don't even know, like, is my book half edited? Is it started like, they don't, they don't get updates and they can wait a long period of time. Again, every hybrid is going to be different, traditional. It's slow, it's slow, slow, slow, unless you get a deal for a dummies book. Those the dummies team I've had, I know a couple people who have written dummies books and they turn them out pretty quick because they like to capitalize on trends the dummies book for AI those kind of things. But in general, you're looking at after you get a deal, which usually takes people six months to a year to get. After you get a deal, you are now looking at probably two years before your book is, is actually launched. One year would be super fast. So because, and the book gets done sometimes you know, is done and then you wait six months before it actually launches. So it's, it's extended period of time. So if you, if speed is important to you, this is not your path. Okay. Okay, let's, I'm just going to check out your comments here. Let's see. Bonnie said 50 cents to a dollar. It's more like 80 cents to a dollar if that helps. Does that, that 30 cents make a big difference? It's, it's pittance. It's not much. And Scotland Scorpion says I get 10% per book for his traditional published book. So yeah, that's a good, a good gauge. Now, 10% per book, 10% of what they get or 10% of what the retail price is. Because that does make a difference. Right. If the publisher is making $10 when the book gets sold, then you know that is a dollar. Right. But if it's retail, then that might be more like A$80 depending on the sale. So. Okay, it looks like everybody's kind of chatting and all good. There's a couple questions starred, but we're good. I'm gonna keep rolling. Okay, so the next kind of category I want to touch on is distribution because this is where a lot of people think they have to go hybrid or traditional thinking they won't get the distribution that they want. And a lot of this is because when people hear self publishing, they think Amazon and they go, I want my book available in more than just Amazon now. So first of all, self publishing, does that mean you are only available on Amazon? I'd like to thank you. You folks are pretty intelligent because you've been hanging around the book launchers TV community. You know, you can get really wide. You should. In general, I just shoulded you. I don't want to should you, but I recommend going wide and not putting all your eggs in the Amazon basket with your books. And the beautiful thing is there's so many ways to do this. Now you can have wide digital and print distribution through a combination of KDP, IngramSpark and then using aggregators like Draft2Digital or. Oh gosh, I just blanked on. I just blanked on the other one. We generally use Draft 2 digital, but there is another one and it will come to me in a moment or maybe somebody in the comments can remind me what the other aggregator is for ebooks. Now bookstores are possible and online bookstores are totally fine. All our clients are available Barnes and Noble for their print books. You know, I think Target, I can't remember all the books even online I think for Walmart and, and Chapters, Indigo Canada and bookstores, you know, English bookstores all over the world. So that part's fine. The physical bookstore distribution piece is a little bit more work. It's possible and you know, you can access it, you know, for consignment or through some channels like doing book signings or events at bookstores and just selling a lot of books, creating demand. There is a pathway to that physical bookstore piece. But you know, it really, how many books are you really going to sell with the effort that goes in to getting your book into physical bookstores? I did do a video talking about that kind of the math of physical bookstore distribution. That might not be enough for you to go on to find it, Angela, but if you can find it, I think that'd be great because I think it walks you through. You know, I use numbers from my own experience having had one book that was quite widely distributed physic in physical bookstores. But then I also talk about the trade offs and you know, not just the math, but regardless it's possible. So bookstore distribution and physical shelf space is important to you. There is a path to get there. And of course with self publishing you can do direct sales all day long. You can sell from your website, you can sell through different platforms. If you want to sell your audiobook or your ebook, you can sell it at the back of the room. You, you know, the world's your oyster when you self publish your book for distribution and you can have it very widely distributed and, and it, there really isn't anything that you'll be left out of again. It's just that physical bookstore piece that you know is a challenge. So if that's really important to you, then hybrid or traditional may be your path. But I think it's really important to understand there's still no guarantee even with traditional, there's no guarantee you're going to be carried in a bookstore because the bookstore still has to see that your book is going to sell, that their audience actually is going to be interested in it. And most of the bookstores, even Barnes and Noble, you know, they've moved to a model where they look at the buying trends of their local Store. So it used to be really pushed down from head office and then, you know, regional would play a role, but they've really moved to individual store buyers. And so, you know, you can potentially get in if they're supporting local authors. If you were on our deep dive on Saturday, you heard Jonathan Stanley report back that his, his local Barnes and Noble wouldn't do a book signing with him for a long, long time. And then they finally called him or got back to him and said, yeah, yeah, we're supporting local authors right now. Which I thought was funny. It's like before we weren't supporting local authors, but right now we are. So you can come in and do a book signing. So. So some hybrids have a sales force that will go out to the bookstores and pitch you. Now you are one of how many books when you're getting pitched. And so. And it also does not guarantee bookstore bookshelf distribution. And it's the same with traditional. You're one of how many books they're going, their sales reps are going to be pitching to the bookstores when they are reaching out and sending their catalogs and all those things. So again, it really does come back to is your book selling, is it in demand? What are the reviews like, no matter which path you take? I think that's important to note that that physical bookstore piece is, is not a guarantee in any of these paths. With hybrid, they do, some of them have, they'll charge you extra for say airport distribution, so you can pay an extra fee and they'll guarantee you a spot at five airports. And that's because they can guarantee it because they pay for those spaces. So that allows them to get in. And I always smile when people are like, how do I get in the airports? And I go, have you ever looked at their top 10 bestsellers? Like, do you think John Grisham really has six of the top 10 bestsellers right now? It's because it was all bought and paid for. So it's important to kind of understand that. And also as mentioned with hybrid, sometimes they're not doing KDP listings at all. So you won't have access to some of those KDP tools. Often you won't have access to KDP at all because it's going through them. Some hybrids, this, it's only print books that they're doing. So you do get control over your ebook. So again, just understand, like, go through the fine details if you are considering hybrid, traditional, best bookstore access and library placement. The one thing traditional does have going for them Is, you know, a pretty darn good library fulfillment and distribution path. The bookstores, it's, it's, it's your best chance at bookstore physical shelf space. But again, it's not guaranteed. It's only if the publisher is choosing it, which goes back to my point about getting yourself a big advance. Also, it's important to remember that if you are in a bookstore, you're spying out, right? So spine, it's very rare you're going to get face, FaceTime, the COVID cover out unless you're really topping the charts. And of course you're not going to have as much flexibility for doing bulk sales or doing big discounts when you go this route. So distribution does get limited. You're not going to be doing. And by that I mean you're not going to be doing direct sales from your website. So there's not a path for you to easily collect email addresses and build your platform going this route. Right. You really have to lean heavily on the extras. Right. A video course, a checklist or an email lead magnet, those kind of things. All right, distribution. So kind of, in summary, distribution, if that's the reason you're going with a hybrid or traditional, it's important to make sure that you're getting what you think you are because it's. Distribution is not a reason to go hybrid or traditional if the publisher is not actively working to place your book in the places that you really want it to be. All right, My final category is marketing support. Because again, this is where I see a lot of people kind of make choices for the wrong reason. AKA they think they need a publisher because the publisher is going to market their book because that's when they make the money. That's not how it works. It should be. I can see why you think that, but that's not how it works. Now, self publishing, of course, you're your own, you're your own boss, right? You're on your own, but you're also in control. You can run promotions, you can, you know, run your ads, you can hire, you can hire pros and calculate roi, return on investment, you know what's happening. And I mean, conversely, if the book's not selling, it's 100% on you. In hybrid, they sometimes offer social media or they offer limited support. They might have some social media templates, press releases, listings. There often is an additional package for PR or strategy and execution of marketing. It depends on the company, but it's not usually included in the initial publishing package. And for a lot of authors, it's not the marketing that's really going to matter for their business and brand goals. So again, going back to those goals, it's really important. But, but for some people, again, these extra packages, like, there's been some packages that, like I said, will get you airport distribution, which for some authors, they just really want to see that, and, and that can help. And then there'll be a promotion kind of path around, around that. Some of them have a great publicity push, you know, that may or may not help sell books, but it might be really good for your business or brand goals. So just know what you need and understand that and make your choices accordingly. Again, with traditional, this is where I think a lot of people sign traditional because they're like, you know, they're only making money when my book sells. But they often kind of just take gambles. With some books, I don't want to say complete gamble, but they'll kind of look at your platform, look at your network. They'll look at the topic and they'll go, okay, we're not going to pay them much of an advance. But if the book sells, great, right? So they'll, they'll kind of look to the author to sell that book, and they'll kind of look at the potential of that author to sell the book, and then they'll give you a deal based on that. But they're not going to put a lot of resources behind it unless they're putting resources behind the book to buy it. Right? Again, that's the advance. And they still in that case are looking at how many books they think you're going to sell, but they're going to put more behind it to make more money from it. And that's why I say if you're getting an advance, it can make a lot of sense because the publisher is clearly going to put, put energy and resources behind, making sure they get a good return on it. All right, so ultimately, that's kind of the main points I wanted to cover. I was just checking my notes to see if I missed, missed anything. The right path depends on your goals. And for some people, you know, one of the things that's most important to them is that they have a publisher. And for whatever reason, it's something that's passionate for them. If that's a goal. I always tell people, okay, what, you know, having a publisher is what's important. What's, you know, is that success, like, full stop. I had a publisher publish my book. I'm successful. For most people, though, it's really like Okay, I need to be able to get on stages, I need to have certain media or I need to, you know, build my platform so that I can launch my next book or I can get the publishing deal I want to get. So understanding what that is and why you would go that route I think is really, really important. So, you know, again, I'm an advocate and I'm definitely biased, but if you want control, faster results, a book that you can do what you want, right, you can pivot if things aren't working and do what you want with it to build your business. I do think self publishing, but self publishing done, right? So you, you're thinking through the strategy. You're, you're getting a book that's edited, you're doing a beautiful cover design that fits with your genre and it's going to appeal with, to your reader, that's going to win. I think in a lot of cases. You know, where I think traditional can be great is if they are giving you an advance or they're giving you something else that's important to you. A promise of a big media tour, you know, certain bookstore distribution that might be vital to you, or maybe it's a licensing deal for multiple countries. Right. You know, that might be an important part to you. And this publisher that you're signing with might have, you know, connections and arrangements or they traditionally do it, you know, this way. Hybrid. I do, I do wonder sometimes what the advantage is of the hybrid. Some people are thrilled with the deal that they take, right? They, they paid less up front and they're happy to split the revenue 50, 50 because they paid less upfront. You know, they got the quality of editing, cover and all the things that they wanted that mattered to them and they're happy to split the revenue to have saved the money up front. And then sometimes they, they think the hybrid is going to be a better path to get bookstore distribution. In a few cases it can be. But again, you have to make sure that your book is positioned well so that when a sales rep is talking to that person in a bookstore and giving it, you know, the three second pitch and putting a catalog in front of them, that your book is still standing out so that it gets where you want it to go in those regards. And then of course, I'd want to understand why bookstore, physical bookstore distribution is so important to you. But, but that's a whole different conversation. All right, so let's go through. Actually we gotta do prizes. So. Okay, so prizes, let's go over there and then Angela will Do questions after that. So of course, if you're. If this is your first time coming to a live, you may not know that we always do two different kinds of prizes. So if you haven't said hello yet, please do say hello. Because one of the prizes we give is for being here and participating in the comments. The other prize that we give is for anybody who has commented the day a video has released. So every Tuesday, every Friday there's a new video that comes out and. Hold on. Trying to get this to go up there. There. Okay. Are you seeing the giveaway tool? Yes, you are. Okay. So every Tuesday and Friday there is a new video that comes out. And when you comment the day of video has come out, you get entered to win some of our fabulous hashtag no boringbooks Swag. Like our oh so soft journal and our. Our mugs. Let's see if I can turn this around. I always tell people it does not come with the blue blockers or the staple or in this case, it's got a pen in it today too. So it doesn't come with those. You can also get a copy of self publish and succeed or self promote and succeed. So these are all the people that commented in the last. In the last couple of weeks and we will see who our lucky winner is. Jason. I feel like Jason just won in our last one. Congratulations. Oh, I don't want to answer three quick questions, so thanks, Jason. And I'm gonna do the other one. Oh. So what you need to do if you're. If you win, I think. I'm pretty sure Jason has won recently, so he'll know the protocol. But email angelaeamooklaunchers.com let her know what prize you would like as well as where to send it it. All right, let's do the other one. And then everybody still has time to comment and say hello. Before I do the final two prizes. For those of you who are here, Alvin Dawkins. Fantastic. Yeah. Alvin, I'm so excited you won. So I don't think I saw Alvin here today. Was he here? Did you see Alvin in the comments? No. Okay, so, Alvin, when you're watching the replay, make sure you email Angela@Teamokers.com and let her know where to send your prize. All right, Angela, what questions do we have?

Alrighty.

So.

And funny enough, Alvin just won on Saturday too.

I mean, when you're hot, you're hot. Yeah, when you're hot, you're hot, apparently.

Okay, so you did just touch on this a minute ago. I just wanted to see if there were any other last things you wanted to add for Misty's question?

No, I think I hit it at the end. Kind of knowing that question was in there, I made sure to kind of COVID those benefits. And again, the, the variety of hybrids is dramatically different. I do encourage anybody before they hire any sort of company, hybrid or self publishing, to check them out on the Ally Watchdog list. Angela can probably find that link somewhere and drop it in as well because that, that's an important. They vet all of them and if they're not on there, they haven't been vetted and many companies are on there because they've been reported as a company to watch out for. So yeah, that would be so good.

I pulled that link. Here we go, folks. It is in the chat.

Amazing. Good job.

Next question is from Henning. And this is a great question. I don't know if we've ever been asked this before that I can't remember. If you've done everything wrong when self publishing, is there a good way to relaunch?

Yeah. So give you another video to go find is the second edition video that I did, I don't know, last month. And so the answer to this is absolutely one of the best ways is to either start over, so delist that sucker everywhere and just do a whole new book or if there is some redeeming merits, right. Like maybe you have some good reviews but you know you can do better or the content wasn't good enough, you can release a second edition. And so I highly recommend, you know, kind of considering that, you know, it is one of those things where you can't. I always tell people it's best to put a good foot forward when you self publish the first time because you can't pull the book out of the hands of the people who have the book after. It's already out there, but you know, the world hasn't ended and you've just learned something, right. So now you can do it again and do it better.

Okay, next up is from Bonnie. So her book is politically sensitive. So which method would work best for you?

Timing the market, self publishing 100% because that's the method that you have complete control over when the book launches. So if you're really trying to time it in a specific way, then you can just sit on it and you know, have it ready to load and launch when you're, you know, kind of when you see the, you know, it's the opportune time. Any other path, I don't think there's just not enough control. Yeah.

So also from Bonnie asking about the low financial return, but she's always had the dream of doing a book signing. So what are some alternatives?

Yeah, you can still do it. And I think it's. And that's kind of why I never say, you know, don't pursue bookstores, because it is. It's the moment you feel like a real author. Right. So I get it, and I did a bunch of book signings, and I think it's one of those things where the first one you do feels amazing and then they lose their luster pretty fast. But at the same time, seeing your book on a bookshelf, in a bookstore, in a library kind of is that moment when you feel like a real author. So a couple paths forward for you. I would recommend going into your local store and seeing if you can do a deal on consignment or if they'll do a book signing with you. Go to the indie stores. Barnes and Noble you can do it with. But indie stores are more flexible with how you can do that. And it can still be a great path and a great experience for you. Every indie store has different audiences, though, so get to know, especially if you're in a bigger city like in la, certain stores, like, there's a couple that just did massive author events, so you'd want to pay really close, close attention to what their events are. And then other. Other bookstores are smaller and, you know, kind of are open to more, you know, more creativity and local author support. So it's going to vary widely. But yeah, go. Go after some of those opportunities or talk to your local Barnes and Noble and kind of do what Jonathan mentioned in our deep dive on Saturday, which was he first approached them and they said, no, you know, keep in touch. And he kept in touch. And eventually they said, yeah, yeah, now we're supporting local authors.

Yeah. And Jonathan self published with us. So, yeah, that doesn't mean that they necessarily already knew about him because he was on their traditionally published list. He self published with us, and he said that he reached out to them. And a lot of times when you reach out to your local book bookstore, they, you know, it does. It does vary a little bit. But they do like to have. There's a big hype in the past since COVID I would say so for about the past five years for local, like supporting local. Whether that's authors, whether that's food, small businesses, you know, so use that to your advantage and try. Okay, next question from Henning. So Henning asks, going outside of Book Lawn. Going outside of Amazon requires deselecting extended distribution, if I read the small print correctly. So I guess he's just wanting confirmation on that.

Yeah, never again. I'm gonna. I was paused and I was like, should I say this? But I will say it, never choose extended distribution in Amazon. It doesn't do anything. So you use KDP to sell to Amazon and Kindle. For everything else, use IngramSpark. And the reason is. And I don't use. And then I don't use IngramSpark for ebooks. So I know this gets complicated. And we've done, we've done sessions on distribution and we'll do another one. It's also where being in our school community, you know, the, the free community that's promoted when the comments are off the screen. But by why being in that community can help. But generally speaking, KDP for Amazon only, right? Everywhere else, for print, use IngramSpark. Everywhere else for eBooks, use a company like Draft 2 Digital or the other one that I still haven't realized the name. Did it come up? Did somebody Publish Drive? Smash. Thank you. It was Published Drive. Thank you. Okay.

I was like, if it's something outside of that, I have no idea.

No, no. Publish Drive. Publish Drive bought Smash Words. Is that right? They're the ones that bought it. Anyways, we don't do much with. We never did much with Smash Words because we're solely nonfiction. So that was one. But yes, Publish Drive and Smashwords, I believe, you know, one of them bought the other one. So just trying to remember here. Oh, no. Was it drafted? I don't know. Doesn't matter. Regardless, that was the one. The other aggregator is Published Drive and Draft Digital. Thank you.

Awesome. Okay, next up from Matthew, any services to automate splitting royalties? And this is your first time live.

Welcome. Welcome, Matthew. Yeah, if you're. If you have co authors, draft 2 digital will do splitting. Royalty splitting. It's a great platform for that. And you can do print distribution through Draft 2 Digital. I generally don't recommend it because you're going to pay Draft 2 Digital to then distribute it to companies that you could go direct to. But if you have a co author, it does make it so much easier to just go through them because they do that for you. Awesome.

I was just looking to see. We do have a Publish Drive affiliate link and I thought we had one for. For Draft Digital.

I'll. We do look for those. Yeah. Book launchers.com forward/D2D is our draft to digital one yeah, you're right. Yeah.

Okay. While you're answering Jason's. I'll look for those. So Jason's question. Congrats on winning Jason. How does revenue typically grow or change from launch day through year one to two on self publishing version versus traditional?

It varies so widely. This is a hard question to answer. Generally, the most authors will see is going to be in that kind of 60 days before and after launch. Like, that's usually the peak sales, but not, not always. And, you know, things happen. A lot of it depends on you and what you're doing to promote your book and to get out there and to use it. So, you know, that's why we have different kind of, of launch paths that authors take. And if you don't have an audience and you're using the book to build your audience, you're probably not going to see a massive, massive launch. But it was fun on Saturday. Again, kind of going back to this deep dive on Saturday. One of our authors, Cynthia, she really just followed what our marketing team was guiding her to do. And she said, guys, I'm not going to sell very many books at the launch because I don't have a very strong network. But she said, I just executed what the marketing team told me to do. And it was funny because on her launch, on her launch day, we were telling her how many books she sold and she was getting mad because she thought we were teasing her. Right. Because she had sold 642 books and she thought it had to be 64 or 42. She's like, you guys are, stop teasing me. How many books did I sell? So there is a path to build. Even when you don't have a big network and you don't have a big platform, if you follow, you know, a certain path, you can see a decent lift on your sales. But of course, the goal is to build on that. And so I think the answer is, for almost all authors, traditional or self published, your biggest sale month is going to be in and around your launch. But then if you want to keep selling books, keep doing things right. And that's where Jonathan's story was fantastic. Because here he was, eight months after his launch doing a book signing at Barnes and Noble. Somebody filmed a video. It went hyperviral, like seen 50 million times, I think was the number. And crazy things have been happening since then. And so I won't spoil it. You got to go watch the deep dive. But, you know, things like that can happen. And Brent, his book's been out for two years and it's just consistently sold and picked up steam because he's been speaking, he's done media tours. You know, he's been doing a lot. He. He's still working with us two years later, too. So he's got a team of people kind of marketing it. So I know it's a really long answer, but there isn't an answer, right? There isn't. Like, this is where it goes. But if you stop marketing your book, your sales will not stop completely, but they will peter out. Because that's just what happens if you're not talking about your book. People aren't going to know about it unless something really lucky happens. Can new publishers put themselves on alliance independent authors to be judged and critiqued? I don't know exactly what you mean. I think if you're asking to go onto their watchdog list. The watchdog list, yes. Maybe you can submit to them and they can vet you. If you're brand new, I don't know if you can do it because they. What they do is they go through your pricing, they want to interview some of the editors you've worked with, they go through your cover process, and then they understand what you're producing your book on as far as your interior and all those things. And I also believe they needed multiple client references in order to give you a green on their vetting, because I went through it. It's been a couple years now since they've kind of checked in on this, but. So I don't know.

Okay, last two questions, which might be perfect for the time from St. John Butler. Are there any plans for Book Launchers to do hybrid publishing?

I am way too passionate about people having full control over their book to ever move into a hybrid model. I have been asked by quite a few of our authors if they could just publish under one of our imprints. But I believe fully that you should have all the control and all the rights. And so it's just not something I'm personally interested in doing. And, you know, it's one of those things where you look at something like Jonathan Stanley selling, you know, an extra 6,000 books. If we were a hybrid, that would have been a huge payday for us. But I am just. I'm actually ecstatic that it's all him. Right? That it's all his book and he gets to enjoy it all because he was the one out there. He was the one out there doing the work. So no, no hybrid.

Okay, last up from SP Witchell. Does an ebook publish on KDP the same day that you upload it. Can it sit there for a release date? IngramSpark seems to point to eBooks. We'll go on SEO immediately after you upload them.

Yeah, so IngramSpark's not a good ebook distributor, so again, I would not use them to distribute your ebooks. Ebook on KDP. I believe it takes 72 hours to process it. But these are questions for Alyssa, because she gets. Gets. She's the one that, on our production side, she handles all of those things and those nitty gritty things. I don't. I don't know. I believe when you upload it, you have to set a release date. But again, I don't do that. I. I joke, but it's not a complete joke that I started the company so that I never had to deal with those details again. And if you.

I mean, we might actually have videos from the past when Elissa was on there where she might touch on that. But. But if all else fails, you could reach out to KDP directly, or they might have an FAQ page.

I'm certain it's in their FAQs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Okay, that was the last question.

Awesome. Okay, we got prizes and then we'll be done. So let me pop over and do the final two prizes. Gave everybody lots of extra time to participate, and here we are. So. Oops, let me switch to the other one. Okay, so everybody has been put in there. It looks like there's 22 people who said hello today, and Book Launchers does not get to win. So, Deborah, congratulations. So you need to email teamoklaunchers.com and let her know which of the swag or books you would like today. And then we're gonna do one more before we say goodbye for today. Let's see who it is. Saint John Butler. Congratulations and thank you for being here. So your prizes were journal, mug, self publish and succeed, Self promote and succeed. And Angela, if you. If you've won all those things, she might have some other books in her closet that she's happy to clear out. So you can always just email her and find out what's in the swag closet.

It's like a swag wardrobe. And Henning, like, kudos to you for knowing this when Julie and I didn't. KDP ebook is 72 hours, but you can set a release date for a year in the future. Thank you.

The question that I don't know the exact answer to was when you upload it, do you have to set a release date? Because I know you can set the release date, But I do. I think you have to. And that's why I was kind of saying, because the question was, can you upload it and then sit on it? And I don't think you can. I think you have to set the release date. And you can only change that release date once, and then you get penalized from kdp. So those things, I know it was just that one finite detail, but thank you.

And it just said, yes, you do have to set a date.

You have to. Okay. Thank you for the clarity. All right. Awesome. Well, thank you, everybody, and thanks, Angela, for being here. And we'll be back again in two weeks. So hope to see you here live in two weeks. In the meantime, definitely check out the DEI from Saturday because that was awesome. All right, take care. Bye.