Publisher vs Author–Your role in the game
Posted by Barry Kerrigan on April 17th, 2006I always counsel clients that there are three main roles in publishing they can take on:
WRITER, who focuses on writing and generating new books
PUBLISHER, who takes on the rest of the marketing sales, production, etc roles.
PUBLISHING HOUSE, which takes on those tasks for multiple titles and/or other authors as well
and thinks big picture publishing business.
You should be clear on each role,
what each role entails,
which role you have the skills for,
and most importantly which role(s) you WANT to have.
Someone who doesn’t want to handle any of the publisher duties would be ill-served to self-publish in most cases, because no one else will do it for you.
If all you really want to do is write books, you’d probably be best served trying to find an agent to represent you and help you find a publisher to acquire and publish your work. That’s not an easy thing to do, but it’s better than taking on jobs you don’t want to do.