Indie vs. Self: What's the Difference

By Julie Daines

There's a lot of confusion out there about indie publishers and self-publishers. Let just get straight to the point. Here is this:

From Judith Briles on AuthorU.org (June 2014)

Don’t Confuse Independent Publishing with Self-Publishing

Indie, Independent and Small Press Publishing Are So, Soooooo Different from Self-Publishing, Vanity Presses and Pay-to-Publish “Publishing”  

I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a zillion times: yes, dear author-to-be (and those already published), there is a difference between self-publishing, vanity presses, pay-to-publish, a small press, and independent publishing. Don’t mix them up. Don’t get confused.

She quotes Wikipedia: 

The majority of small presses are independent or indie publishers, this means that they are separate from the handful of major publishing house conglomerates, such as Random House or Hachette. The term ‘indie publisher’ should not be confused with ‘self-publisher’, which is where the author publishes only their own books.

  Defined this way, these presses make up approximately half of the market share of the book publishing industry.

This is a great article if you're confused about any of these terms. Go and check it out.

Unfortunately, I feel the term independent publishing (Indie) is going the same way so many words have already gone--Verbicide. It is used so frequently in the wrong sense that it's original meaning is becoming lost.

Traditional Publishers are Actually Trade Publishers

by Deren Hansen

Whether we call the new mode of publishing self-, indie, or artisan, the most consistently used label for the formerly dominant publishing model is, “traditional.”

As people who work with words, we understand how important it is to use the right ones. There are, for example, some circles where traditional means, “time-tested values,” not, “hopelessly stuck in the past.” But the real problem with the label, “traditional,” isn’t whether it implies the business model is good or bad but that it doesn’t accurately describe the business model.

Major commercial publishers are, “trade publishers,” because they published to the book trade. They sell their wares to booksellers, not readers.

“But,” you may object, “readers are still the ones buying the books, so what’s the big deal?”

Consider the problem of children’s books: children don’t buy books. Thanks to the inconvenient fact that very few children have disposable income, essentially all children’s books are purchased by well-meaning adults. This means that the book must appeal not only to the child for whom it’s intended but also to someone in the circle of adults with an interest in supplying that child with reading material. It’s not uncommon for the two constituencies (children and adults) to have very different reasons for choosing a book.

Booksellers, of course, want to sell books. The ideal book for a bookseller is one that every reader will want. Readers want to buy books that will entertain, educate, or provide an experience. The ideal book for a reader is one that speaks to his or her specific needs and desires. Absent that ideal book, readers choose the ones that seem to best suit their needs from what’s available. It’s not uncommon for the two constituencies (booksellers and readers) to have very different reasons for choosing a book.

Booksellers order the products they resell from trade publishers. Trade publishers don’t deal directly with readers. That means trade publishers are primarily in the business of convincing booksellers to offer their wares to the reading public. Convincing readers to read their books is at best a secondary concern for trade publishers.


Deren Hansen is the author of the Dunlith Hill Writers Guides. Learn more at dunlithhill.com.

Publishing Options and Exploiting Your Intellectual Propery

by Deren Hansen

Given the recent discussion of traditional and self-publishing, I feel the need to join in with some structural observations. My aim is to give the conversation a baseline of economic reality.

First, however, I have to say that the degree to which partisans are vilifying each other reminds me of the Mac vs. PC religious wars of the '90s. As someone who understands that all Turing-complete computational devices are provably equivalent, I grew impatient with the name-calling in that context until I came to understand that the deep feelings arose because people needed to justify the $3000 - $5000 investment they'd made in one platform or the other.

In addition to the investment dynamic there's a notion of art and its noble pursuit wrapped up in our aspirations as writers. You're here because books have affected you deeply--probably more so than any other expressive medium. That experience elevates reading and writing from the level of mere commerce. But the fact of the matter is that if you want to trade your words for money you're squarely back in the realm of business.

Writers who charge for their work are in the business of exploiting their intellectual property. It's unfortunate that the word, "exploit," has few positive connotations because it is the correct term: you're trying to derive benefit from your words and the stories they contain.

In the past, the best way to exploit your intellectual property was to license it to a publisher--effectively entering into a partnership designed to benefit both parties. Similarly, in high tech launching a start-up became practically synonymous with securing venture capital because the necessary equipment was too expensive to finance yourself. In both cases the pattern of trading future returns for current working capital was so dominant that alternative approaches could be written off as non-starters.

But things change.

In high tech you can rent all the computing power you need (and only what you need) from cloud computing providers. In publishing, you no longer need $30,000 to $50,000 to print, store, and sell books. In other words, it's now not only possible to exploit your intellectual property rights yourself--doing so in the right circumstances might make better economic sense.

All of which is a long way of saying that finding a publisher or becoming your own publisher can and should be a clear-headed business decision. And just like any other business, you must understand the full implications of your options: licensing your intellectual property to a publisher doesn't guarantee you'll be taken care of; publishing it yourself isn't a short-cut to the fame and fortune the gatekeepers have wrongly withheld from you. Both paths (in all their variations) require hard work over a long time with no assurance that you'll ever see a return on your investment.

We need to move past trying to justify one approach over another and take a clear-headed look at the promises and pitfalls of all the expanding opportunities for writers.


Deren blogs at The Laws of Making.