Ramit Sethi and Tim Ferriss weigh self-publishing against traditional publishers. Self-publishing wins if you want direct income and already have an audience. Traditional publishing is better for reaching bookstores and building national credibility, though publishers do minimal marketing for you either way.
Questions this video answers
2004 (Ramit: "my first book in 04")
70% (Tim: "70% of the books there are backlist")
About 200,000+ new books per year in the US (Tim)
Two to three years (Tim)
Chapters
I love this question. My opinion has changed over time. The question is, you both publish bestsellers.
Now through traditional publishers.
What do you think about self publishing?
I want to hear your thoughts on this first. Okay.
Yeah, I'm curious about yours as well.
So.
When I started writing my first book, this is my second book, my first book in 04, I was very negative on self publishing. It was not credible. It was for people who couldn't get a real publisher and people had these dreams of grandeur, of like, oh, up.
Here in Barnes and Noble and stuff.
Well, things have changed quite a bit. Self publishing has become, in my opinion, a little bit more credible. And I think it really goes back to the goal. If your goal is to make money off your book and you have a large audience or community or platform, then if your goal is to make money, then I would just self publish. If your goal is to build a platform beyond what you've got and it's to go national and you need support in reaching national publicity and things that you can do on your own and then I would go with a publisher. With that said, not all publishers are the same. Most are really bad. My friend, his advice is great. It's right on. He said publishers are good at two things. They're good at distribution and they're good at designing book covers. And one thing is that every author knows is publishers don't do marketing for you. So self publishing or regular traditional publishing, the most important thing in my opinion is having a platform of people who already like you and will buy your stuff before you write a book regardless of what it is.
So my feelings are very similar. Just a few additional points. Publishers are primarily useful. They're useful on many different fronts. It depends a lot on the publisher. It is good having seen some awful, awful self published books that could have been awesome with proper editing. There is some value to having editors, believe me. But primarily you're looking at retail distribution because if you have a self published book, it's going to be next to impossible to get into Barnes and Noble when you recognize 70% of the books there are backlist, meaning they're kind of classics.
So you're fighting with. I already know that number.
Yes, you're fighting with every new published book. Like 200,000 books per year plus in the US alone for like 50 square feet shelf space. So you're not going to get in. So retail distribution and then also the mainstream media, TV print will look at your publisher as a filter. It's very challenging to get the press on the mainstream Media if you don't have a traditional publisher, generally meaning one of the big six, like a HarperCollins or a random House or Crown, one of the imprints. Second is most of the value that I have received from the book. Outside of reader feedback and the blog and other things, my compensation, so to speak, has been access to people and resources more so than my royalties. So could I have made more money by self publishing? Probably not just because it was my first book, but with the next book I'm going through the same publisher. Why would I do that? I think self publishing will be more recognized as a viable alternative in two to three years, especially if Borders goes out of business, which could be possible. But what I get by going through a random House is the ability to be viewed as a legitimate author. And there is a certain magic and credibility that goes along with that, a tremendous amount. And that has given me access, I think, indirectly to people, to places, to resources that have nothing to do with the checks that get written to me in my Random House. For those of you who might read my blog, you know that I have. I believe there are many different currencies. Income is one of them. Time, mobility. But there's also authority, reputation, audience. And having a traditional publisher has helped a lot in building those other currencies in my respective bank accounts, so to speak. And that's what I care most about. What is your true net worth? And I think your true net worth on some level is if you had every penny taken away from you. It's what you have left. And the book, through Random House, I think, has helped to build up all of those other assets that if you took everything away from me, I wouldn't be happy about it, but I'd recover. I like that.
That's also the point of I will.
Teach to be rich.
A lot of people, we talked about how it sounds like a big fat scam for our work week, also so ridiculous. But you read it for two minutes and you realize, rich, only a small part of that is about money. And I think the authors I've come to respect think relentlessly. Long term, they could easily monetize things so much more. But they focus on the long term because they know that there's credibility and there's a lot more money and a lot more time and a lot more everything to be gained from those.
