Subsidy Publishing Emerges

As the publishing industry became more competitive, and as many traditional publishers declared bankruptcy under the “royalty” model, a new system emerged called “subsidy publishing”. In this system, if the publishing company accepted the book, the author would then pay for the cost of publication, and receive a slightly larger compensation as the books sold. As this system emerged, many authors who still believed in the “old, traditional” system, maintained:
“I’ll never pay to get my book published. If it is any good, a ‘real’ publisher will pick it up and promote it.”
For a good ten years, the term “subsidy publisher” had a relatively negative stigma attached to it by many authors.
As subsidy publishing evolved, the term “self-publishing” entered the industry. In self-publishing, the author pays all the costs of the book, and also publishes it under his/her own publishing company name. As a result, tens of thousands of new publishers sprouted up all over America, most producing products so inferior that the bookstores would never consider carrying them on their shelves.
Today’s Subsidy Publisher
In today’s market, virtually every major publisher has evolved into utilizing some form of subsidy publishing. Of course, the old, traditional publishers still exist for the highly visible authors who have large audiences who stand ready to buy their next book. For example, if you have a nationwide television show, or are a popular entertainer or politician, you may still get your book published under the old royalty system and do fairly well economically.
However, most of the “old, traditional publishers” have now also added some sort of “subsidy publishing” to their arsenal for those authors who do not have a built-in following through which they can sell a large amount of books.
By using some form of subsidy publishing, many quality books that previously would not have been published are now available to the market. Of the 193,000 books published in the last year where records are available, the vast majority were under some sort of a “subsidy” arrangement. The subtle shift in the industry is that these subsidy products were produced under the supervision of a skilled publisher, thus producing a product far superior to most of the self-published books.

Dr. Mike Wourms

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