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When Traditional Publishing Works
And when it doesn’t
Traditional publishing used to be the only way to get your work out into the world. You would work for months or even years on a final draft of your book and then send it out to agents, praying that one of them would like it enough to represent it. These days, with the proliferation of self-publishing, traditional publishing is only viable in a narrow set of circumstances.
But when you need to go with a traditional publisher, you’ll regret not doing it. That’s what happened to me.
When lightning strikes
In 2014, I published a book that took off and became a Platinum Bestseller on the platforms I published it on. I was elated by its success because before it I had gone through a half-decade of submitting to agents, magazines, and publishers with some, but very little, success.
This book was my middle finger to the gatekeepers who kept me from getting any of that sweet, sweet pie.
About a year later, my success in the American, European, and Australian markets was leading to piracy in those places and got pretty bad in places like Russia and China, where they don’t give a damn about our copyright laws. I approached my mentor in the publishing game…
