What Publishers Do for Authors
psst...it's a lot
What is the relationship between publishers and authors? And what do traditional publishers actually do for authors? A recent Substack post claiming that “no one buys books” falsely 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.
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 serializing on 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.