Jane Friedman: Publishing Options in 2019 Panel

Jane Friedman

Jane Friedman has twenty years of experience in the publishing industry, with expertise in business strategy for authors and publishers. Her newest book is The Business of Being a Writer.

Monthly, she analyzes the publishing market and looks at the spectrum of self publishing to traditional publishing in order to provide this information to authors and publishing professionals on her website and via Twitter.

She explained that true hybrid publishers bring the strengths in traditional publishing with the strengths in self publishing. Many self publishing services will call themselves hybrids but they are not doing anything that you couldn't do it yourself. She shared that you have to educate yourself and examine what you are getting from them versus what you could do yourself.

Jane shared that when a creator self publishes, it is easy to get it distributed by Ingram, uploaded and available on Amazon, and listed on Barnes & Noble. But the more difficult part is making sure that others actually know it exists. How do consumers, teachers and librarians know that the book is available for them? That is the challenge because the marketing falls on you. In traditional publishing, the publisher has wider channels of connectivity to make your book known and available to readers. It is important to understand where on the publishing spectrum your project best fits and also what you bring to the table to get the book out in the world.

Some resources she mentioned for those interested in self publishing are Independent Book Publishers Association and Writer Beware.