There is a great deal of misinformation floating around about the way books are published. Authors and many others throw around terms like “POD publisher,” “traditional publisher,” and “self-published” with lack of understanding of what terms really mean. Sadly enough, some magazines, bloggers and others pick up on the common and incorrect definitions of the terms and repeat them, further muddying the waters. This is the first of three articles that will give you some information and accurate definitions of terms related to publishing.
Traditional publishing. A totally meaningless term, as tradition is only good for the period to which you wish to ascribe it. If you take tradition to date from around Shakespeare’s time (the seventeenth century), then tradition means that you find a patron to pay for your work to be published and support you while writing it. Your work is then usually sold on the street corners by chapmen, hence the origin of the term “chapbook” for short pieces printed on cheap paper and bound in paper only slightly heavier.
If you look at tradition as being from the nineteenth and early twentieth century, tradition was often for books to be published by the author and sold by door-to-door salesmen in advance of being printed. This was called sale by subscription, and it is how Mark Twain sold most of his work, when he was not writing work for hire for newspapers as a way of hauling himself out of the pit of debt created by his ill-advised investments.
What people usually mean when the say traditional publishing is…
Commercial publishing. Commercial publishing is what most authors aspire to attain, where the publisher takes on the financial burden, and risk, of publishing their book. Of course, since the publisher is taking all the financial risk, the publisher is also entitled to the lion’s share of the money from the sales of the book. Commercial publishers always pay royalties to the author (with a wide range of rates) and often pay an advance (which is essentially a loan against future royalties."
The biggest publishing houses in the U.S. are commercial publishers, and the six biggest publishing houses (located in NYC) share about 22% of book sales in the United States. That figure may not sound so staggering, until you realize that the remaining 78% is divided among about 86,000 smaller publishers!
Print On Demand. Also called POD, and therein lies part of the confusion, as some people consider POD to stand for publish-on-demand, which is a different thing entirely. Print on demand, or POD, is a printing technology which has come to be associated with a business model: that of only producing books when there is a demand, as in an order by a reseller or a retail purchaser. It is somewhat more expensive in the short haul to print books in short runs like this, but it is much less risky (you’re not stuck with thousands of unsold books) and it is much more ecologically sound, as you are not destroying hundreds of trees to produce books that may not sell and may end up being thrown away or pulped.
POD is also referred to as digital printing, because the books are printed by what is essentially a large, very fast laser printer, pages assembled, covers and bindings applied and the books are trimmed to size. The quality of POD books has greatly improved over the last few years, and it is the rare person indeed who can tell the difference between a book that has been digitally printed and one that was produced on an offset press. Print on demand is used by publishers large and small, and is no indicator of either quality of the work or the quality of the book.
Many people think that POD is a new idea, but it really is not. It is the publishing industry's equivalent of JIT (just-in-time) manufacturing, an idea that has saved billions of dollars for automotive, electronics, and other industries since the 1970s.
Addendum June 27, 2009: A commenter said that my definition of "traditional publishing" was trite, that everyone knows what a person is talking about when they say "traditional publishing." I disagree. The problem is, it's misleading. If you say "traditional" publishing, the implication is that it is the regular way, the way it has always been done, thus... the Accepted Way. Those things simply are not true. Commercial publishing is a more precise and meaningful term with less baggage; it means what it says, without a value judgement.
Think of the expressions "traditional religion" and "traditional family." Tradition means different things to different people, and is ambiguous. By using an industry-standard term like "commercial publishing" instead, the statement is more clear and not value laden. Would you consider Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain to be a traditionally published author? Well, he bought his own publishing company to print and sell his own books. We'll talk more about some famous self-publishers and subsidy publishers in Part 3 of this series.
What I want to achieve with this series of articles was what is often called "disambiguation"—the clarification of terms that may have multiple meanings. So, I stand by my original statements about commercial versus traditional.
"To write what is worth publishing, to find honest people to publish it, and get sensible people to read it, are the three great difficulties in being an author.
Charles Caleb Colton, writer and cleric 1780 - 1832
Quotation taken from The Writer's Journey Journal
Comments
Great article, Tony. This is a rapidly changing field and their is a lot of confusion out there. Thanks for a concise overview.
Dennis Fleming
Author, "She Had No Enemies"
The explanation of "traditional publishing" is a bit trite. No one thinks we're talking about publishing as it stood in Shakespeare's time. It's generally given to mean, as you say, 'commercial publishing' but...isn't *all* publishing done for commercial purposes?
Nice article, Tony. I'm so glad to see an accurate definition of POD here and doubly glad you didn't lump it in your next article with vanity/subsidy press, etc... In the genre I write in, I've seen people do that. I would like to add, that as with your definition of commercial publishing, authors who publish with small presses that use POD technology receive royalties and sometimes, an advance, as well. I especially applaud this sentence: "Print on demand is used by publishers large and small, and is no indicator of either quality of the work or the quality of the book." Bravo!
Maddie James
www.maddiejames.com
National Romance Novel Examiner
Nicole,
Thanks for the comment. It may be trite, but to label what is truly commercial publishing as "traditional" is incorrect. Words are the stock-in-trade of a writer, and need to be accurate. "Tradition" in publishing includes commercial publishing, self-publishing and subsidy publishing, because all three methods have been around for a long time. That's the point I was trying to make, but which you may not have grasped.
As for the commercial nature of publishing, the accepted definition of commercial publishing is the one I gave, where the publisher bears the financial risk of the publication.
But in answer to your question, no, all authors do not publish for commercial purposes. Some people publish for self-gratification, some for the purpose of evangelizing an idea, some because they want to have a legacy to leave behind, in print.
Thanks for the compliment, Dennis. An informed writer is able to make better decisions about how to handle the work over which they have labored.
POD is a reflection on the quality of the book produced:
1. The DPI is lower than offset or web press printing.
2. The paper quality is different--even if you opt for the highest quality available, becuase of the inks used, the paper has to be specially formulated; it's 20# laserprinter paper.
3. The cover is a 1600 dpi four-color print, and poorer quality stock.
4. The binding glue is a heat-glue, and is not meant to withstand even the ordinary life of a trade paperback.
It's great technology, but it really isn't the same quality.
Lisa, thanks for coming by.
Fortunately for those who elect to use POD technology, your observations are not quite on target.
1. The DPI may be lower, but the majority of readers will see no difference.
2. I don't know where you checked about paper, but my POD printer uses at least 50# or 55# acid-free stock, not 20# bond, same as my offset printer does unless I request heavier paper.
3. Again, stock depends upon what the publisher specifies. Normally I use 65# cover stock, which is 10 pt, whether it's offset or POD, but I have used 12 pt C1s. No difference between offset and POD.
4. All TPB books are glue-bound. They are not meant to last a lifetime. If you want a heritage-quality book, it has to be tape-sewn, and probably casebound, which the average consumer doesn't want to pay for.
If you had a bad experience with a POD printer, I'm sorry, but your information about quality is either incorrect or out-of-date.
But, there ARE bad printers out there--cho
I operate a tiny publishing company that (so far) publishes only books that I've written. Therefore I am a self-publisher. My business could also be called an indy publisher or a micropress. We use POD, so we're a POD publisher, too. I want to make money, so I'm a commercial publisher. I don't publish books for other authors, or pay advances or royalties, so I'm not a traditional publisher.
I think that "traditional publisher" has a clear meaning in the industry (and can easily be understood by outsiders), and definitely can't be replaced by "commercial publisher."
Perhaps "traditional" is not the best-possible term, but "commercial" is definitely not a better term.
An alternative could be "trade publishing," but it's understood only within the publishing trade.
Michael N. Marcus
author of "Become a Real Self-Publisher" -- due next month
BookMakingBlog.Blogspot.com
Real-Self-Publisher.Blogspot.com
www.SilverSandsBooks.com
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