Why indie published books are bad for traditional publishing.

I run a micro-publisher, attempting to make social change in a capitalist world through our book releases and our employees. We host amazing fantasy events alongside every release to boost author incomes as well as create a sense of community amongst our readers.

The publishing industry is thriving. In 2020, book sales peaked at 202 million books in the UK alone making millions in revenue. The industry is changing though. Over the last 5-10 years, the number of self published books has increased dramatically. More and more authors are skipping the gruelling and uncertain process of querying their manuscript and opting to do it themselves. With creative and financial control, a lot of author's have had a tremendous amount of success much to a lot of people's surprise.

This has had an inevitable affect on traditional publishing and it's not a bad thing.

Traditional publishing has been painted as a prestigious opportunity for the best of the best. It comes with legitimacy and the funding to boost the books sales. However, in recent years, it has been pointed out that traditional publishing lacks diversity and innovation. Sticking to trends and overused framework, traditional publishing is starting to become boring. A books success is based more on social media hype rather than quality and we are hearing the same voices over and over again.

This is where indie publishing is stepping in. With lack of access, authors that don't fit the mould (unjustly I will add) are taking their publishing success into their own hands and are doing amazing.

Readers want to see themselves as well as different kinds of people in their books and are actively choosing to pick books that are celebrating diversity and quality storytelling.

Even traditional publishers know this and are taking on books that have found success as an independently publishing story.

With the increase in resources available for authors to take control of the work and their profits, more and more incredible books are coming from indie publishing. Social media and the ability to market books to a wider audience internationally has also opened a lot of doors for authors. They control their script, their book covers, their marketing and most important who gets cuts of what.

Majority of authors have a second job even in traditional publishing and publishing houses take a big cut from the revenue made on book sales leaving author making barely anything on each book but when independently publishing there's more control. Author's don't need to worry about setting a cut aside for their publisher and agent making more profit per sale.

Publishing is an uncertain industry, but in the future, it wouldn't be unreasonable to predict that independent publishing will be in more competition with traditional publishing.

Comment what you think and what your favourite indie published book is.