Even worse, because the ONLY way they make money is to sell copies of the book, you can’t give copies away for free, you can’t give the PDF away for free, you can’t use your content in other places as a lead generator for your company. They now are going to force you to put all your promotion efforts on selling copies, which does not always help you reach as many people as possible. Also, they give you ZERO price control so your ability to make marketing deals with any number of people is none. This type of flexibility is critically important for so much marketing, and they won’t do it. 4. Huge time investment Even if you get a traditional book deal, it’s a huge amount of effort to put it all together. You have to find an agent to represent you to a traditional publisher, you have to do a book proposal that will appeal to a publisher, and then you have to shop the book deal. From the start of the process to publishing it’s usually 24 months— often 36. That’s two to three YEARS, which is an incredibly long time in the modern media world, especially for a nonfiction author. 5. Bookstore placement A lot of people think traditional publishing is their preferred method because it’s the best way to get into bookstores. This is not an accu- rate calculus. Traditional book publishers do not get most of their books into bookstores on any large scale. Furthermore, the ones they do get in tend to get pulled out quickly—unless they sell a lot of copies. And your book will not be on display until it has already proven it will sell a lot of copies. hOW TO PiCk ThE righT BOOk PUBliShiNg OPTiON · 323