A few days had passed since I’d seen myself in the back cover of one of the most important newspapers in Spain, and then I knew what it means to have achieved this feat while being a SELF-PUBLISHED writer (without editorial support).

Even though it’s still not seen with good eyes to get a book out in the market without a publisher to back it up, I gave myself the task of checking it out for myself by studying the strategies that the publishers themselves tend to use. If I don’t believe in my own book, who will?

“Not all books with publishers are good, and not all of those without them have to be bad.”

When I decided to write my first novel, La joven funcionaria de prisiones (The Young Corrections Officer, freely translated), at the same time I began looking into how I’d sell it. In this process, I found out that the percentages in sales that the publishers get — and distributors, for that matter — are very high, leaving the author with a meager commission even though they’re the creator. Add to that the fact that after publishing, the author keeps working side-by-side with the publisher to make sure the books are sold. I noticed that the round trips and hours invested by the author are endless — albeit necessary — and also that the same publisher releases many books at a time to make their business profitable. All of this happens after they’ve decided to publish you, but from you sending your manuscript to the point where they tell you “yes” or “no,” a year may have passed.

I have also noticed that publishers have been sprouting in ever-growing numbers recently, much like the amount of complaints lodged by many authors in order to defend their rights against them, for things like how much they get paid each year, why they’re being lied to about the number of copies sold or why there are publishers who simply disappear from the face of the Earth, bringing along with them the royalties that belong to the author.

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