Rhody Trader

Carl Futia announced the publication of his new book earlier this week. He’s rightly proud of being published and it sounds like the book got off to a good start. He’s so excited that’s looking to write a new one. That’s all well and good, but he said the following:

But I need my current book to sell well so that I can find a publisher interested in my tape reading book.

Here’s the irony of that statetment. The better Carl’s current book does the better off he’s going to be self-publishing his second book.

Wiley ain’t going to be happy with me for saying this (they published Carl’s book and my book, The Essentials of Trading), but if you’re already established and can promote the book yourself, going the traditional publish route just doesn’t make a lot of sense. The publishers take most of the revenue and don’t do that much for you beyond printing the copies and putting them in the distribution chain. There are plenty of other options for that, especially in print-on-demand.

I’ve had this discussion with the folks from a popular forum site with whom I’ve talked about a joint book project. The owner of the site likes the cache having a traditionally published book provides, but with a 6-digit membership to his site he can do a lot more in promoting the book than the publisher can. That being the case, why should he accept a 10-15% cut?

And for those who might be thinking otherwise, there’s very little money in books unless you way, way, way up in the upper stratosphere of authors. It’s kind of like blogging in that way.

Trackback URI |