4 Reasons To Traditionally Publish Your Books 

What is traditional publishing?

Tradition publishing is when an author sells the rights to their work to a publishing company and in turn, the company sells the book and pays the author a varied amount depending on the contract with the company. 

Traditional publishing usually comes through a process of querying literary agents and writing submissions to different publishers. While sometimes these submissions come back with rejections, there's no better feeling than when that book deal acceptance email hits your email.  

There are many pros and cons to traditional publishing just are there are with self-publishing. Today I'm going to focus on four reasons you should consider seeking a traditional publisher for your novel.

1. Team of Support 

Sometimes the journey of authorship is an emotionally exhausting task and not everyone has a team in their corner that is routing for their success or understands when they are stressing out about a small aspect of their story. With traditional publishing comes a built-in support system for almost every step of the way. Your team wants not only your book to succeed but for you to come out of it with as few hairs pulled out in frustration as possible. This isn't o say that there won't be some stress involved, but at least there is someone there for you to reach out to when any step of the process becomes too overwhelming.

2. Credibility 

When a publisher publishes your book they have their name to throw around as well as yours. People aren't just putting their trust in your book through your name alone, but because of the promise of the company that yours is a book worth reading. 

3. Overhead Cost 

With traditional publishing, you as an author are not going to have to pay as much of the costs out of pocket as you would with self-publishing, where everything comes out of your own savings. Some self-publishers end up deep in debt before their book is even close to being ready to be put to market. Instead of the author having to pay for individual services such as beta readers, editors, sensitivity readers, formatting, cover design, and distribution, the publisher cover most of this cost for you as part of your contract. 

4. Distribution 

When it comes to self-publishing, getting your books into bookstores can be one of the hardest tasks to accomplish. It's not as if you can walk into a big corporate-run book store and ask nicely for them to sell your book in their stores. There's also the possibility that local bookstores (such as mine) will only carry traditionally published works so if your dream is to see your novel on the shelf of your local store traditional publishing may be the best choice. Traditional publishers already have contracts and agreements in place with bookstores and other retailers where they will be able to send out your books for physical distribution and you don't have to think about things such as consignment or stock. 

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While both self-publishing and traditional publishing have their good and their bad the one you decide to go with is the one that is going to be best for you. 

Some people believe they only stand a chance of making it as full-time writers without a publishing company or that they won't be taken seriously as a writer if they don't traditionally publish their books, but this just isn't true. 

Whether you choose to go with self-publishing or traditional publishing a lot of time, hard work, and dedication are going to be needed. 

Best of luck!

Keep writing.

With love, 

B.K xo

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