Tucson Festival of Books

For years I’ve given a talk called “Three Ways to Publish,” in which I describe the three main paths to publication: selling your book to a rights-buying “traditional” publisher, hiring a publishing services firm like Wheatmark to publish your book, or starting a publishing company of your own (self-publishing). Over the past few years the lines between these paths have become increasingly blurred:

• The largest retailer of books in the world, Amazon, carries nearly every traditionally and self-published book equally
• Authors with successful self-published books are often picked up by traditional publishing houses
• Successful authors often dump their traditional publishing houses in favor of going “indie”
• Publicists, editors, agents, and book marketing professionals who used to work exclusively for traditional publishers now routinely offer their services to publishing services firms and indie authors

Another way the lines are blurring is that savvy indie authors and publishing services firms are adopting the […]