You are at the mercies of the dailies. With an indie you don't have that.
I've never sold my publishing. I have 100% control of all of my publishing and that includes everything, every use of my songs.
We have a massive system to regulate creativity. A massive system of lawyers regulating creativity as copyright law has expanded in unrecognizable forms, going from a regulation of publishing to a regulation of copying.
Profile has half the publishing and they control and administer the publishing and distribute and own the records, so our group is a 10-point crew. But we got a lot of money off of the shows.
Most of my money is more brand association deals. I own my publishing so that's allowed me to leverage my brand in ways that most people cannot or will not because they won't make any money doing it.
I know dozens of authors who have had a lot of books published by New York, and they won't ever take another Big 6 contract since they've gotten a taste of the freedom, control, and money self-publishing offers.
Booksellers are tied to publishing - they need conventional publishing models to continue - but for those companies, that's not the case. Amazon is an infrastructure company; Apple sells hardware; Google is really an advertising company. You can't afford as a publisher to have those companies control your route to market.
Authors can easily produce ebook versions of novels and shorter work which publishers don't own.
There are many traditionally published authors who have hated the cover their publisher's decided on. Or the title or the marketing or the advertising. But there was nothing they could do about it.
Why should we leave it to Harper & Brothers and Redding & Co. to select our reading?
