I’ve seen a lot on Twitter lately about the “authority” of traditional publishing versus the slap-dash effort of indie publishing.

I have one “big five” published piece that’s part of an anthology. It’s sold somewhere around 10,000 copies.

Lemme tell you a couple things:

The entire scope of editing, start to finish, for this “big five” publication was as follows:

They sent me my file back and said “Look for typos.”

That’s it.

Wanna talk royalties?

Yeah it’s an anthology so my cut is smaller than it would be if it was just me.

They gave me a $125 advance (based on word count).

But after 10,000 copies, I haven’t earned out that advance. I’ve made a grand total of $83.

With my “unprofessional and hasty” self publishing, I often hire editors to help me solidify story structure and catch errors. Any remaining errors you might find are probably from me doing stuff after editing.

And I earn far more than $83 from selling a tiny fraction of books.

I’m not looking to start a twitter fight or a debate — just demystifying the process. Big Five publishers have amazing reach — indies almost never get into physical bookstores. Their books are often better, but that’s due to the sheer number of books sent to them

and their ability to simply choose the best of the best.

Being an indie author doesn’t mean you couldn’t make it with the Big Five. Hell, that’s where I started. Shortly after that I got an open invite to submit novel pitches directly to an editor there.

I choose to be indie because I can control my release schedule and I can publish what I want.

I’m proud to be an indie author and I hope you are too.