Barry Eisler on J.A. Konrath’s blog suggested this morning that publishing is a bit like a lottery. I find that to be an absolutely accurate portrayal of the publishing industry. He suggests that you take a chance and put in the time to write and self-edit your manuscript. That’s like buying a ticket. You can increase your odds of winning the publishing lottery by putting in more time writing and more time editing and submitting more and more manuscripts, but in the end it’s still a lottery. Then you submit and you wait for the million to one chance of winning the lottery and landing a deal. Even self-publishing is a bit like a lottery. Only the chance is tied up more in if people will see and buy your work.The purpose of his post was to discuss the fact that less people would play the Big 5 Publishing industry lottery if they knew 3 key factors in their playing the lottery, and the Big 5 Publishers are only telling writers 1 of those factors: the payout. The other two factors are the cost and the odds. You already know the payout. They tell you all the time “Stephen King. J.K. Rowling.” Face it. If you buy scratch off lottery tickets, you have checked the back for the odds of winning. Also, you know when you buy a lottery ticket what the odds are roughly. You want to know the odds. It would be nice if the Big 5 released how often then brown file manuscripts at the door. You also need to know the costs up front. Like what percent of your royalty rate you are losing by going with Big Publishing.
There are pluses and minuses to both types of publishing. That’s for sure. I think that one side of the coin is weighted a bit more than the other at this point though.
I will leave out Konrath’s exposition and let you get that from his blog directly. But I agree a bit with his point too, except he is a bit more caustic about it than Barry.
You can read a bit about my experience with playing the lottery over at my blog M. D. Reynolds Writes.
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Konrath's blog was actually my next stop this morning. I had to go read his post after reading this from you. Thanks for posting this here. Eisler is right, publishing is a lottery. I also think the issues Konrath has with limited support, loss of rights, and artistic meddling have value. I hold the Self-Publishing can be the greatest thing for writers.
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