The Big Five publishing houses produce almost 60% of the English-language books and thousands of small publishing houses and self-published authors produce the rest. The turnover and the rate of failure of the little guys are huge.
The big publishing houses sell good books and advertise heavily. They offer an intrinsic guarantee.
The new indie books are always risky for the publisher and for the reader. It forces the publisher to play the Big Five game with no resources. It leaves the self-published author to fend for himself. The publishing Big Five game is a game you can’t win. You don’t have the resource they have.
So what’s the answer to…?
The answer is to accept you can’t win and create your own game. Sell online, through local stores or directly from your website. And this happens more and more each day.
Over time, the readers will understand that the books they need and like to read are not only published by the Big Five.
