Would you turn down the opportunity for a traditional publisher?

I am contracting with an author right now that is in essence doing just that. He was contacted by (yes you read that right -she sought him out) the former vice-president of Penguin Books about his novel. She has been trying to hook him up with a traditional publisher since last year and wants to publicize him after that.

He is tired of waiting and so he called me back (a year after we talked last) to represent him.

He decided that he wants a book in print so he's just going to publish the book himself through Book Surge (a subsidiary of Amazon.com) and sell thousands of copies and be picked up by a traditional publisher later. Here's the kicker: He's not making the book available to major distributors like Baker and Taylor and Ingram. If you've read the other posts you know that means bookstores cannot order his books. He plans on selling thousands of books through Amazon.com alone. He talked about nationally syndicated book review programs that he wants to be on. He has great plans for his book but all that resonated through my head was our conversation from a year ago when he said, "There's typos in the book but they don't matter!"

I think it's an understatement to say I was floored through our whole conversation as he revealed more and more of his plans.

Here are the main points in our conversation I felt he needed to know:
1. I can't make any guarantees about the media who might want to interview him because I haven't even seen a copyof his manuscript. (I have to check and see if he cleaned up all the typos he mentioned before.)

2. The big nationally syndicated shows he was talking about aren't going to look at him because he doesn't have a major publisher behind him. Your publisher matters when you want in with the big players in the literary industry.

3. The cover price matters. He said he chose his cover price of $15.00 but if there's only 100 pages we have a major problem!

4. He can't expect to do any bookstore signings since the bookstores can't purchase his book from the distributors.

The other topic I discussed is that I would never encourage an author to stop trying for a traditional publisher until he got his final no. He has not received a single rejection! He said his friend waited 2-3 years and was published by a small publisher that didn't rocket his friend to the top so he wasn't going to wait.

Wow. He wants to sell thousands of copies right off the bat without making them available to bookstores, getting a top of the line publisher or even possibly having a crystal clear manuscript. But he's hiring a publicist so that should make it all better!

Memo to authors:
Publicists can typically do what you can't but we're not demi-gods or miracle workers. Please give us something to work with!

I can already see the cloud of doom on the horizon making me the bad guy because his book didn't sell thousands of copies.