You may have seen a recent Substack post claiming that “no one buys books.” The piece concludes that publishers do almost nothing for most authors and that most non-celebrity, non-franchise authors working under the traditional publishing model will reach about “a dozen readers.” (
of Counter Craft debunked the fewer-than-a-dozen-copies rumor back in 2022 and responds thoughtfully to the current post here.)In this post, I’d like to share what publishers actually do for authors—including debut authors who get a tiny advance—and what they’ve done for me. I’ve been one of those authors with a tiny advance from a small press (three times, in fact), and I’ve also been a “bestselling” author with six-figure advances from a Big 5 publisher. At every stage of my career, publishers have done things I couldn’t afford to do for myself, things I didn’t have time to do for myself, and things I could not have have done for myself with any amount of time or money. To be clear, I’m not talking about very tiny, independent publishers*—but about traditional medium-to-large publishers, established small presses, and university presses.
If you like this post, you might also enjoy The Highs, Lows, and Lessons of a Longtime Writing Career.
This is definitely not to say that traditional publishing is the only path, or even the best path, for most writers. I understand it’s tough to break in. I also understand that many writers prefer the immediacy of Substack or self-publishing (if I didn’t enjoy Substack, I wouldn’t be here). So this post isn’t about what you or any other writer should do. It’s only about what traditional publishers do, and have done, for writers for many decades.
(*addendum: a reader pointed out that traditional small publishers do most of the things big publishers do. More on small press resources later in the post).
What Publishers Do
There’s a ton of misinformation about what publishers do and don’t do. When I commented about services publishers provide on a different article, a reader replied that these services “certainly” aren’t for a first-time author “who doesn't know how to market, doesn't have his own marketing budget since he's barely making ends meet, and doesn't have the knowhow or time to figure it out...”
But in fact, yes, these services are provided free of charge for all authors whose books are published by a traditional publisher—regardless of the size of the advance or the author’s follower count.
If the publisher has decided to publish your book, they’re not going to decide, “oh, this person doesn’t get an editor” or “we’re not submitting any review copies” just because it’s a debut book! They certainly don’t decide not to cover printing costs just because you don’t understand marketing! It just doesn’t work that way.
Here is a partial list of what traditional publishers do. These services are provided for “small” books as well as “big” books from traditional publishers. (Any publisher that asks a writer to pay for editorial, design, printing, or distribution is not a traditional publisher—that’s a pay-to-play publisher, an entirely different animal, and it’s not what we’re talking about here.)
Pays the author an advance. The first installment on the advance is paid before the book is ready for publication. It may be a tiny advance, a middling advance, or a big advance, but the advance is in the contract. Unless you’re dealing with a pay-to-pay publisher (which traditional publishers are not), the publisher pays the advance that’s in the contract, according to the schedule stipulated in the contract. The advance is usually paid in three to four installments: commonly upon acquisition, acceptance of the final manuscript, publication of the hardcover, and publication of the paperback.
Provide editing and copyediting services
Cover all art, design, and printing costs
Send digital and sometimes physical copies of books to the major trade publications (Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Library Journal, Booklist, etc) months before publication
Distribute books to retailers
Keep track of sales
Pay royalties if/once a book earns out
The items listed above are for every book. A publisher may or may not do the following things too, depending on the size of the publisher and how much money and time they want to put into marketing for any given book:
Host Goodreads giveaways
Purchase ads
Set up bookstore events
Contact magazines/newspapers/online sites to pitch articles by the writer to coincide with publication
Promote the book for years to come in backlist catalogs
Run online promotions (such as discounted ebooks) to boost sales years after publication
Are publishers really pariahs?
I absolutely agree with the common consensus that the Big 4 focus too much of their advance budget on celebrities and franchise authors. But as for the widely held belief that publishers are just pariahs preying on writers, providing nothing in return, my experience has been quite different from that.
I should mention that, among the eight books I’ve published, two have been bestsellers. That means that 75% of my books have not been bestsellers, which situates most of my books as solidly mid-list. Most of my writing friends and acquaintances who are “bestselling authors” have had one or two or three bestsellers—such as a New York Times bestseller, a USA Today bestseller, an Indiebound bestseller, or a “national bestseller” (Publishers weekly explains the delineation, sort of, here). The majority of these authors’ books have been mid-list titles—books that sold respectably but ended up only on local or regional bestseller lists or none at all. I’m a fan of the mid-list. Although it sounds kind of meh, it’s actually not a bad place to be. Unless you only read blockbusters, many of the books you read are probably “mid-list.”
Despite my mostly mid-list status, my publishers have supported me in numerous ways throughout my career. This applies to my giant conglomerate publisher, which—along with my literary agent*, an indispensable partner in my career—allowed me to write for a living for many years. It also applies to my current publisher—an independent literary publishing house in NYC I had admired from afar for many years. It even applies to the university press that published my debut story collection. (*I can’t overstate the importance of a talented, persistent literary agent, but that is a subject for another post).
Small and University Presses Accept Un-Agented Submissions: They Still Do a LOT for Authors
One of the most attractive aspects of university presses, and many small presses, is that they accept un-agented submissions.