Here’s a great example: a Ferrari is a cool car. But what do you think of the old guy who bought it? Compensating, right? It works the same with traditional publishers. Having a “fancy” publisher’s name on the spine of your book doesn’t make you important. In the modern world, no reader notices or cares who publishes your book. In fact, in many circles (especially entrepreneurs and forward think- ers), traditional publishing is starting to be seen as a negative signal. In the modern book world, controlling the rights and usage of your book is now seen as much more important by most authors. In fact, traditional publishing is now the new “vanity” publishing—because authors with traditional deals are looking for that ego boost and external validation rather than “picking” themselves, and owning their book. TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING PROBLEM #3: ARE THE TRADE-OFFS OF TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING WORTH IT? So even if you can get a traditional publishing deal, AND you fall into one of the three reasons to publish it, the trade-offs may still make it a bad choice for you. These are the major trade-offs with traditional publishing: 1. No ownership of rights and profits You are literally selling the publisher not only the upside profits of the book, but more importantly, you are selling them control of your intellectual property. Once they own the book, they ONLY care about selling copies. You can no longer do anything with that book that doesn’t involve paying THEM for copies of it, because that is how publishing companies make money. hOW TO PiCk ThE righT BOOk PUBliShiNg OPTiON · 321