The "accepted" key to deciding on the publishing "model" is: who owns the ISBN?

If you own it and pay for some help in doing your own publishing, then the company or people who help you are thought of as coaches - then you get all the profits and pay all the bills.

If someone else owns the ISBN’s - it is their publisher prefix - AND you pay them to do some package of services, then they are defined as a subsidy house. They are listed as the publisher of record and control your book AND pay you royalties of some sort. 

Some are better than others, but realize if it isn’t your own ISBN block, then someone else has published your work and if you participate in the cost of doing that (production, marketing, etc.), then you have been subsidy published. If someone else owns the ISBN and you haven’t participated in the cost of being published, then you are "traditionally" published.

It really is that simple. No matter how many flowery words you put around it, there are only three ways to be published:

• Traditional (they own the ISBN and you don’t pay them and you get royalties),
• Self (you own the ISBN, pay all the bills and keep all the profits) and
• Subsidy (they own the ISBN, you pay some participation in the costs and they pay you royalties).

Everyone falls into one of those categories. From there, the actual operational implementation of all three varies widely. You need to very carefully analyze what you are getting from your invested dollars.

Tags: getting published, ISBN, self publishing, subsidy publishing, traditional publishing

This entry was posted on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 3:48 pm and is filed under Publishing Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.