Why do many still think traditionally published means better?

There’s something strange about the way people judge a book before they've even read it. I think it’s driven by a slightly awkward question sitting underneath the whole business of publishing.

Now before I get started let me be clear; there are many wiser and more experienced people who know the ins and outs of the publishing industry than me. This is just my pondering on what seems to be happening. Also, there are many nuances and routes to publishing from traditional publishing, independent publishing and completely self-published. For the purposes of this article, I’m mainly talking traditional vs. fully self-published, purely to highlight some of the issues.

Now, let’s get into it. Why do many still assume that a traditionally published book is somehow better than an independently published one?

There are brilliant indie authors (which of course there are thousands) and some pretty terrible traditionally published books (I’ve read a few). And yet there’s still a sense that being picked up by a traditional publisher means you’ve been admitted into the proper club, while independently publishing can feel like standing outside the door trying to prove you deserve to be let in.

There are genuine differences, of course.

Let's get one thing out of the way first. Traditional publishing generally offers things that many self-published authors have to organise themselves. There’s likely to be a mix of professional editing, proofreading, cover design, typesetting, printing, distribution, publicity and access to established bookselling networks. A good publisher also brings experience and expertise to a book, and that can make a huge difference to the finished product.

Let’s be honest, self-publishing sometimes gets those things wrong. A book can be badly edited, contain spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, have a cover that looks homemade or be awkwardly formatted. The paper may feel cheap; the print quality be disappointing and the description on the back make the whole thing sound as though it was written by somebody who’s never actually read a book. These things matter. Readers want a professionally produced book, regardless of how it was published. Afterall they’re paying their well-earned money for it.

An indie author may pay for a brilliant editor, commission an excellent cover, use a professional typesetter and work with people who have years of experience in publishing. The fact that the author has arranged those things themselves doesn't make the resulting book less well made, and as an indie author it gives you an incredible amount of control over it all.

If anything, it raises an interesting question: why should we care who organised the work if the finished book is good?

I suspect part of the answer is that readers have traditionally relied on publishers as a form of quality control. For a very long time, getting a book traditionally published was difficult (and I’d argue even harder now). You have to convince somebody else that your manuscript is worth publishing. An agent will have to believe in it, an editor will have to champion it and a publisher have to believe there’s a readership for it. Someone ultimately has to decide that the financial risk was worthwhile. (Yep, I agree, that’s a lot of have-to’s)

This whole process has created an expectation shortcut which is: “if a publisher has chosen a book, it must be worth reading”. The problem is that the shortcut has quietly become a judgement. "Somebody at a publishing company thought this book was worth publishing" has become "this book must be good." Those are two very different statements.

A publisher isn't often deciding whether a book is good. They’re making a commercial decision. A wonderful book can fail to find a traditional publisher, while a commercially attractive book succeeds. Neither outcome tells us everything we need to know about the quality of the writing.

Yet the publisher's name becomes a kind of badge. The reader doesn't have to know anything about the author or how much work went into the book. They don't even have to read the first chapter. The logo on the spine has already told them something about where the book sits in the hierarchy.

There’s another reason the stigma exists, and this one is more understandable. For years, self-publishing had a reputation for being what used to be called vanity publishing. The stereotype was fairly simple. An aspiring author couldn't persuade a publisher to take their book, so they paid somebody to print it, received a garage full of copies and spent the next five years trying to persuade friends, relatives and the local library to buy them.

But publishing has changed enormously. Digital printing, print-on-demand, e-books, online retail, professional freelance editors and designers, and direct access to readers have transformed what it means to publish independently.

The technology’s changed. The business models have changed. But the old perception hasn’t changed quite as quickly. There’s still a lingering idea that self-publishing means somebody couldn't get a publisher; that they failed. Sometimes that's true, but it isn't remotely the whole story.

What if choosing indie isn't failure?

An author choosing independence isn't necessarily an author who failed to become traditionally published. They might be an author who decided that traditional publishing wasn't the route they wanted. That distinction matters because the stigma depends partly on the assumption that there is a ladder: you write a book, try to get an agent, try to get a publisher and, if you succeed, you've made it. If you don't, you self-publish.

The implication is that independent publishing is what happens when the proper route doesn't work. But why does there have to be a proper route?

Perhaps this is where the psychology gets particularly interesting. Traditional publishing provides something more than practical support. It provides validation. Someone else has looked at your manuscript and said yes. That can be enormously important to a writer. Writing a novel is an absurdly vulnerable thing to do. You spend potentially years creating something that exists almost entirely inside your own head before eventually handing it to strangers and asking them to judge it.

When somebody says yes, it can feel like proof. Proof that you’re a real writer. Proof that the book is good and that all those hours weren't wasted. And if somebody says no, it’s very easy to interpret that as the opposite. Maybe the book isn't good enough. Maybe I'm not good enough.

But publishing decisions are far more complicated than that. A rejection may mean the manuscript isn't right for that agent or the publisher already has something similar. It can also mean the market is difficult or maybe the publisher simply doesn't know how to position the book.

Yet because traditional publishing is associated with selection, being selected is associated with worth. Once that happens, self-publishing starts to look like the absence of validation.

The irony is that readers don't actually know and many don't care

There’s something slightly funny about all of this. A reader can pick up a traditionally published book and have absolutely no idea how many people involved in its production loved it, hated it, argued about it, changed it, rescued it or nearly killed it. They don't know which editor fought for a particular scene, whether the author had to rewrite the ending or whether the cover was exactly what the author wanted.

They simply see the finished object.

And that’s exactly what they see when they pick up a self-published book. The book doesn't come with a little certificate explaining how it got there. It just sits on the shelf. The words are still the words, the characters are still the characters, and the story either works or it doesn't.

Perhaps the real issue is visibility

There’s another reason indie authors struggle to escape the stigma. Traditional publishing has infrastructure. Books arrive in bookshops. They appear in catalogues. They’re reviewed. They’re stocked by libraries. They may have publicists and sales representatives working to get them in front of readers.

An independent author has to do that themselves. And that creates a strange feedback loop. If fewer self-published books are visible in certain places, readers encounter fewer of them. If readers encounter fewer of them, they have less opportunity to discover excellent independent books. If they don't discover those books, the assumption that the traditionally published world contains the "real" books remains intact.

The indie author is expected to be a writer, publisher, marketer, publicist, social media manager, bookseller and occasional delivery driver, then people ask why they don't have the same visibility as a major publisher. It's a slightly unfair comparison.

What does "independent" actually mean?

Maybe we need to rethink the language. "Self-published" can sound as though the author did everything themselves. But many self-published authors don't work that way at all. They build a team. They hire editors, proofreaders, designers, formatters, illustrators, printers and marketing specialists. They make decisions about their books and pay professionals to do the things they aren't qualified or skilled to do.

The author is still the person making the final decisions, but that doesn't mean the book is produced without expertise. In some cases, the opposite may be true. The author has actively chosen every person involved. There’s no reason that should automatically produce a worse book.

This seems like an obvious conclusion, which probably means it’s worth saying.

Maybe we should judge the book not the route it took to get onto the shelf or the logo on the spine. Read it. See whether the writing works, if the characters stay with you and if you still care about the story the following morning. Those things seem much more relevant to me.

A publishing contract can tell you that somebody in the publishing industry decided a book was commercially viable. But it can’t tell you whether you will love it. And a lack of a publishing contract also can’t tell you that you won't.

Hopefully the stigma will eventually disappear

I suspect the distinction between traditional and self-publishing will continue to become less useful as the publishing landscape changes. And hopefully it will. Many people are currently saying the publishing industry is broken.

There’ll still be differences between the routes. Traditional publishers will continue to provide services and expertise that many independent authors don't want to organise themselves, while independent authors will continue to have freedoms that can be difficult to achieve within a traditional publishing structure. And there are of course other routes as mentioned at the beginning like through independent publishers, one of which I am lucky to have found for my first three books through Rowan Prose Publishing.

All models have advantages and disadvantages, and none guarantee a great book.

And perhaps that is the bit we should remember.

A book isn't made good by the route it took to reach us. It’s made good by what’s inside it. The strange thing is that we already know this.

We say we shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but perhaps we should also stop judging it by its publisher too.