When I work with a client as their ghostwriter or book developer, one of the first questions they ask me is how they should publish and market their book. I explain to them that many artists and creators, including musicians, filmmakers, and writers, have faced this question. The fact is that creating a work of art—a book, a record album, a film—takes time and money. After you’ve created your work, if you want to reach a wide audience, you need to invest in marketing and distribution. It’s not unlike launching a small business! The job of marketing the product can often be bigger than making it!

Film projects are highly capital-intensive, and it’s standard procedure for a film director to have a financial partner in the form of an investor or executive producer. Likewise, music recording projects usually involve a record company that pays the bills. But books are different, because it’s entirely possible for one person to write a book without any outside financial assistance. Anyone can write a 90,000-word book for free! The emerging author may find themselves with a finished product they own 100 percent and unencumbered by outside ownership interests.

So the author asks me, “Now that my manuscript is done, how should I publish it?”

If you’re an author, you have three choices.

1. Self-Publish

Publishing a book requires various tasks. They include editing, designing the book interior, designing the cover, arranging for distribution, and handling promotion, including getting reviews. The same is true for music albums and films. When you self-publish, you act as your own project manager and investor. You either do these things yourself or you hire people to do them on a contract basis. You oversee their work. This takes time and money, but the upside is that you have complete control over your product. You own it 100 percent. Every penny of sales goes into your pocket.

The advantage of self-publishing is that you can create whatever art you want! You can write your book or record your music exactly as you want, with nobody to tell you to change. If you sell ten copies or ten thousand, it’s your book and no one else’s.

2. Subsidy Publishing

In the old days, this was called “vanity publishing,” and was considered second-class. But times have changed, and subsidy publishing has become a big business. Subsidy publishing is when you pay a company to act as your project manager and handle all the tasks that you would otherwise do yourself. Most subsidy publishers sell package deals because they want you to spend as much as possible. Their job is to “upsell” you. You can pay, say $5,000 for a basic package that will cover getting your physical book printed, or $10,000 for printing and marketing and promotion, and so on. Subsidy publishers like to pretend they’re selective and require you to submit your manuscript for “approval,” but they’re just pre-qualifying you for a sale.

How about your copyright? There’s a subtle difference between your copyright and your publishing rights. If any subsidy publisher requires you to assign them your copyright, run for the exit! That’s crazy and stupid. Why should you give up your copyright to a company that you are hiring and paying? No way! But many will ask you to assign exclusive publishing rights to them, which means you can’t turn around and hire some other publisher to also publish your book. From a practical standpoint this makes some sense because you don’t want two versions of your book on the market at the same time. But still, it seems creepy. Imagine if you hired a company to paint your house, and they asked you to sign a contract promising not to hire any other company to paint your house.

The biggest complaint I hear from my clients about subsidy publishers is that they don’t perform. People say to me, “I paid thousands of dollars to a publisher and months went by, and they kept giving me excuses about why my book wasn’t published!” This is because they make you pay up front, and if they’re unsavory or just dumb, they can do nothing, and then it becomes your job to try to get your money back. It’s not easy—once they have your money, it’s difficult to extract it from them.

3. Traditional Publishing

The traditional publisher—either an independent or one of the Big Five—signs you to a contract and pays all the costs associated with your book. They may even agree to advance you cash against anticipated royalties. The biggest “book deal” to date was $15 million advanced to President Bill Clinton in 2004 by Knopf for his memoir, My Life. This sum was equaled in 2023 by Gallery Books (Simon & Schuster) for their advance to Britney Spears for her memoir, The Woman in Me.

Traditional publishers offer massive platforms and blue-chip reputations. They do all the work, and all you have to do is make the rounds of talk shows and book signings. But for many of my business clients, traditional publishers are unacceptable for several reasons.

1. They control your product. They can change the title and compel you to make editorial changes. Your book becomes part of their brand, and they’ll change it to fit their brand. One of the most famous name changes happened in 1998 when Scholastic bought the rights to Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first Harry Potter novel by JK Rowling. For the American market, Scholastic insisted that the word “philosopher” would be misunderstood, and suggested instead Harry Potter and the School of Magic. Rowling disliked that idea, and eventually they settled on Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. When the film version came out, the difference was retained: Warner Bros. kept “philosopher” in the U.K. and most markets, while substituting “sorcerer” in the United States.

2. Your book is part of their production schedule. Many of my clients have been offered major book deals, but the publisher will say, “You’ll be slated for publication eighteen months from now.” Many authors just don’t want to wait that long.

3. Some small publishers will do nothing for your book. I have personal experience with this. About ten years ago I was offered a deal for a thriller I had written called Avita Doesn’t Love You. The publisher was Whiskey Creek Press, which I think is now defunct. They took my rights for seven years. In return, they hired an “editor,” who returned the 80,000-word manuscript with literally not one change except the removal of a handful of occurrences of the word “that.” WCP designed a crummy book cover, published it strictly as an ebook, and stuck it on their website. That was all they did. Without a doubt, I could have done a better job of it myself. Avita sat there, year after year. I began writing letters demanding release for non-performance. Finally, they replied and agreed to relinquish the rights and return my book to my control.

Such horror stories are common in book publishing, the music industry, and the film business. The ironclad law is this: If you agree to let another entity publish your work, and they make any level of investment, you now have a business partner. Your partner could be terrific or they could be terrible.

If you do it yourself and pay for it yourself, you own your product. It’s a deal that an increasing number of my clients can’t refuse. But whichever path you take, you owe it to yourself to be an informed and aggressive advocate for the book that carries your name.