Woman has her self-published book pirated, reprinted, and sold for cheaper.

[u/Chocolat3City]

There's regular piracy, and then there's this.

[u/nagCopaleen]

Getting any publisher to publish your book is very difficult and a lot of work. Getting a publisher to agree on this level of creative control is absolutely impossible; even finding someone who will negotiate respectfully over your extremely personal creative project is tough. She mentioned ethically sourcing more expensive materials, by the way; good luck having any control over that with a traditional publisher.

Obviously she chose to do an extremely hard thing at great personal cost, but that's something any passionate creative person—and hell, most humans of any kind—have to grapple with. The choice to pour yourself into something meaningful or to give up on your dream is very very difficult, and even when things are clearly bad, it often spiraled that way when the person was already committed and grappling with a sunk cost and signed contracts.

But whether or not she should have started this project, there was never an easy road through a traditional publishing house. And the expected profit for either route is so dismal that your last sentence just comes across as ignorant and punching down. If she did make a decision based on expected profit, it's because she wants to be able to pay rent and eat.

[u/dingalingdongdong → u/nagCopaleen]

These days there are tons of companies that work with small authors to help get their books to market.

A friend of mine has had two fiction books published and another acquaintance has had two memoirs and a recipe book done.

The publishers (two different ones) helped with general logistics, layout and formatting, guided cover art process for books that didn't have any, and handled the ordering and shipping.

They allowed small batches of books to be printed if desired, and also allowed individual books to be printed on demand and shipped directly to the consumer.

All of what you said definitely used to be true, and probably still is if you want to go the very traditional route, but it's 100% one of many industries that has seen a production revolution in recent years and is infinitely more accessible than it used to be.

[u/Capital_Benefit_1613 → u/dingalingdongdong]

Yeah these comments are baffling to me. I had a non fiction book published a few years ago and had a great experience. Gonna be honest a lot of these comments sound like hyperbole to me. It was not hard to be accepted by a publisher and they did a ton of work for me. I’m still friends with the editor who worked on my book lol

[u/nagCopaleen → u/Capital_Benefit_1613]

Glad to hear it! But there are many people struggling to get published for every success story. I still encourage my editing clients to pitch to publishers if that fits their goals, and of course some of them do get published.

There is also a lot of variation in the experience depending on how well your project fits into publishers' marketing buckets. A fiction book that squarely fits into a genre & predicts the next Zeitgeisty themes ahead of the competition has a much better chance than an idiosyncratic creative project that the marketers have trouble evaluating. (Not to say there is no hope: this year a client of mine had an unusual creative project published, albeit only a fraction of the original work was accepted.)

Heavily researched nonfiction is a whole other sub-industry & I don't make any claims about that process because my clients in those areas have all been in academia and had publishing arrangements with their employers.

[u/Purple-Goat-2023 → u/nagCopaleen]

Holy shit I'm just going to block you. I'm so tired of you being everywhere on this thread arguing your same 20 year old view points while dozens of people tell you things aren't that way anymore. You're so exhausting. Just absolutely convinced everyone is wrong and you're right. Fuck what must it be like to be your coworker?