Article Surfing Archive

24 million adults in the United States consider themselves creative writers but less than 5% have ever been published anywhere. 172,000 titles were released in 2005. It has been estimated that at any one time there are between 5 to 6 million manuscripts looking for a publishing home. Many writers are turning toward publish-on-demand (POD) houses like iUniverse, AuthorHouse and Publish America to get their books into readers* hands. About 25,000 titles will be released by POD houses in 2006. Does a publish-on-demand book, sometimes called vanity or subsidy publisher, help a previously unpublished writer get closer to the brass ring of a commercial publishing contract? Or does it bump them down a rung on their climb up the publishing ladder?

Writers often comment that a publish-on-demand book will at least *get their name out there* or that a POD book will show that they are capable of writing a 50,000 to 100,000 word manuscript. But does a POD book really help get a writer commercially published? That question was asked of nearly 60 successful literary agents in the Hill and Power 2006 Survey of Literary Agents.

These agents* collective opinion is that a publish-on-demand book seriously hurt an author's chance at being commercially published. Agents were asked to rate their response from 1 - significantly hurt, to 5 - significantly helped. The average rating was 2. 28% declared a POD title to be neutral (a rating of 3) but half of those specified that a POD title would only help if the sales reached a significant level, from 5,000 to 10,000 copies. Just a handful of publish-on-demand titles have reached that level of sales. The average number of copies sold for a POD title is around 100.

The book publishing industry has never been easy to break into and these same literary agents see the environment getting a bit more challenging in the next year or so for unpublished writers. Combine that with the significantly increased number of unsolicited submissions agents say they*re receiving and writers need every boost they can get toward agency representation and the ultimate goal of commercial publication.

Unfortunately, contrary to what quite a few writers think, that boost isn't going to come from a publish-on-demand book.