What Does the Future of Fiction Publishing Look Like?

Do you go with traditional, non-traditional, or REALLY non-traditional publishing?

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For a long, long time, the only way to make any money as a fiction writer was to go the traditional publishing route.

Along the way, you could submit short stories to magazines, lifestyle sections of newspapers, and anything else that might help you land an agent and/or a contract from a publishing house.

This was the only way to earn money as a professional fiction writer for a long time.

Then, eBooks and ePublishing became a thing. Whole new avenues of possibilities were open. And you could still create more traditional paperbacks via self-publishing.

This has been both a boon and a negative. A boon because many authors who couldn’t get past the gatekeepers of traditional publishing gained an outlet. What’s more, you also get all the profit, rather than having to share it with your agent and/or publishing house.

It’s a negative because there are no gatekeepers. Anyone can publish anything, even if it’s factually bullshit. You can publish without editing and you can publish utter garbage. Once, I was hired to record audiobook versions of some truly awful, poorly edited books that may or may…