Kind Of A Big Book Deal

Episode 18 - Is Traditional Publishing Right For You?

• Meghan Stevenson

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What separates the dreamers from the authors with a big book deal? In this real talk episode, Meghan Stevenson pulls no punches. She shares the uncomfortable truth behind traditional publishing success rates and the one thing that determines who makes it and who doesn’t: alignment.

Spoiler alert: it’s not your book idea, your expertise, or even your writing skills. It’s whether you're willing to grow a large audience and build a platform that can sell 20,000+ books in a year.

Meghan walks through examples of both success and failure, revealing the mindset, effort, and strategy behind the rare 2% who land major deals. If you’re an entrepreneur hoping to land a publishing contract, this episode will challenge your assumptions and help you decide if the traditional path is really right for you.

Get the Craptastic Mountain freebie here: https://meghanstevenson.kit.com/2f3c13271d

Episode Highlights:
(0:00) Intro
(1:45) The hard truth: 2% success rate
(3:06) The key factor: alignment
(4:36) What publishers actually expect
(5:38) Selling 20,000+ books is required
(6:13) Real example: alignment in action
(7:24) Real example: misalignment and resistance
(9:01) What the 2% do differently
(10:16) If audience growth isn’t for you…
(12:01) The biggest dream killer
(12:39) Outro 


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  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meghanstevenson/
  • TikTok: @meghan.stevenson.books
  • Website: https://www.meghanstevenson.com/


Have a great idea for a book but don't know where to start?MeghanStevenson.com/quiz


Traditional publishing expert Meghan Stevenson blasts open the gates of the “Big 5” – Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette, and Macmillan – to share what every entrepreneur and expert needs to know about landing a book deal.

In episodes released every other Monday, Meghan shares wisdom and stories from 20+ years in publishing as well as interviews with authors, literary agents, and editors. She also answers questions from listeners like you.

Whether you are an experienced entrepreneur with an empire, or are just starting out – this podcast will help you understand what you need to do in order to turn your dream of being a bestselling author into real life.

Meghan:

Sometimes it's a mindset issue, other times it's fear. Sometimes it's lack of desire. Not everybody wants a huge audience or a business empire, and that's okay and just like it's a big ask to sell 20,000 books in the first year, it's also a big ask to grow an audience of 100,000 plus. It is a big ask to grow an author platform. Welcome to the Kind of a Big Book Deal podcast where entrepreneurs come to learn about traditional publishing. I'm your host, Meghan Stevenson.

Meghan:

After working as an editor for two of the biggest traditional publishers, I started my own business helping entrepreneurs become authors. To date, my clients have earned over $5 million from publishers like Penguin, random House, simon Schuster and HarperCollins. In these podcast episodes, I blast open the well-kept gates to traditional publishing. I'll explain what every entrepreneur needs to know about landing a book deal without losing your mind. I'm going to share stories, answer your questions, interview the successful authors I've worked with and probably save platform more than a tech bro. So if you dream of landing on a bestseller list but have no idea how, this is the podcast for you and I am so, so glad you're here.

Meghan:

I want to start out this podcast episode by saying that today might be a tough conversation. That today might be a tough conversation for some of you to hear, and that's because we're going to talk about the likelihood that you will get a book deal. You listening to this right now. Since 2019, I've taught more than 200 people the basics that you've been listening to and all sorts of paid offers workshops, memberships, bootcamps but here's a hard truth Out of those 200 or more people, only four have succeeded. That success rate is not amazing. It's around, you know, 2% and, shockingly this might surprise you to hear, but it's actually better than average. It's actually double the typical rate of success that I could find online, because, though it's hard to know exactly how many people get rejected in the world of traditional book publishing, everything I could find guessed that the failure rate of authors is roughly 99%, meaning that 99% of wannabe authors failed to get a literary agent, which is the first step to getting a book deal with a traditional publisher. And even after that, 99% of projects submitted by literary agents to publishers get rejected. Now for what it's worth. My team and I have a much better success rate than that, but I want to keep this comparison simple and truly apples to apples. So you might be wondering what's the difference between the majority of wannabe authors who fail and the 1 or 2% that succeed? So, based on my experience, it's not the book idea, it's not even an author's ability or their expertise. Instead, the difference between success and failure in traditional publishing for experts and entrepreneurs who want a how-to book is alignment. The difference is alignment.

Meghan:

So to understand why this is, we have to go back to the 3P framework. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go back and pause this episode and go check out episode four. This will make a lot more sense once you know that framework. So let's start with the first P potential. As I talked about way back in episode five. Most people don't get stuck on potential. That's because most book ideas have it. Most ideas could be a best-selling book. Instead, most of the time, the dream killer is the second P, which is platform.

Meghan:

Well, why would that be? Because of traditional publishing, specifically what the industry expects from authors. Keep in mind that because I specialize in what is known as prescriptive, how-to, self-help nonfiction. That's what I'm going to keep talking about here. The rules that I live by, that I work by, only apply to experts and entrepreneurs writing this kind of book, if you want to know why that's important, you can go back again into the episodes. Check out episode three, check out episode 11. I do a deep dive into why category matters and why the right help and the right things you're listening to and the right things you're reading really matter in terms of your authorship and in terms of your success or failure in publishing.

Meghan:

But let's circle back right. Let's talk about why traditional publishers are different and what they expect and what actually our entire industry expects, from someone like me to a literary agent, to an editor, to a publisher, to everybody that's working in the traditional book industry. So, in order for an expert or an entrepreneur to get a book deal, you need a proven way to promote and sell 20,000 copies or more of your book within the first year. Now, in order to do that, you usually have a business and an audience, right? So I want to pause here and say that I recognize being able to sell 20,000 copies in the first year is a big ask, and oftentimes our authors don't do that. But they have to be able to show that they can, and oftentimes they blow that out of the water. Right, they sell 50,000 copies or 100,000 copies, or 60,000 copies or 30,000 copies in the first year, and that's awesome.

Meghan:

I'm not going to argue whether this point is fair to authors or reasonable to expect or whatever, because in my world, expecting an author to be able to sell 20,000 or more copies is the capital T truth. Birds fly, the sky is blue, sun is up today and traditional publishers need their authors to sell books, preferably thousands and thousands and thousands of copies, and do the marketing sales and publicity themselves of copies, and do the marketing sales and publicity themselves. If you don't like that, you can stop listening to this podcast and go elsewhere. That might seem harsh, but it's important, it's important to me and it's important to you. So, going back to the main topic of this podcast, that brings us back to you guessed it alignment. The best way to explain what alignment is and is not, in my opinion, is through some examples. So let's start with a positive outcome.

Meghan:

Last year I met an entrepreneur who had a small online coaching business helping women recover from thyroid disease. She has a proven program that got results and a decent following on Instagram, but needed to grow substantially in order to get a big five book deal. So on a call, I told her that she said okay and promised to get back in touch when she had a bigger audience. Fast forward to today, when this same entrepreneur has more than 600,000 followers on social media, was able to complete her book proposal and is meeting with literary agents like literally today, the day I'm recording this podcast. This entrepreneur's goals for herself in her business were in alignment with what traditional publishing demands, so everything worked out.

Meghan:

Now let's talk about when that's not the case. A few years ago, I met an established, well-respected executive coach. She had all the right credentials to be a traditionally published author, but she didn't have an established audience. In our conversation I could tell right off the bat that she was resistant to the idea of being visible online, to using social media, even in a hands-off way where someone else would manage it for her, and she ultimately really wanted to stay the way she was. She wanted to keep her business small and elite and be a best kept secret, and that's a fine choice. Except that wasn't and isn't in alignment with traditional publishing like at all. Right, she wasn't in alignment with the industry, so it wasn't going to be a good fit for her, and I could tell you so many stories about these exact kinds of conversations.

Meghan:

What I know after having hundreds, maybe even thousands of those conversations is that 98% of the time people bulk. Sometimes it's a mindset issue, other times it's fear. Sometimes it's lack of desire. Not everybody wants a huge audience or a business empire, and that's okay and just like it's a big ask to sell 20,000 books in the first year, it's also a big ask to grow an audience of 100,000 plus. It is a big ask to grow an author platform.

Meghan:

But what I want you to recognize is that the 2% of people who do succeed at getting a book deal want those things. In the conversations I have with those folks the 2% who do succeed, every single person that I've seen grow from like zero to book deal or from a small platform to a big platform said something like if that's what I have to do, then I'm going to go do that. I want to pause and put an even finer point on this. What I want you to recognize is that these four entrepreneurs my 2% success rate were willing to put time. They were willing to put effort. They were willing to put money into growing their audience, to get a book and to grow their business. But that effort wasn't all for their book, or even just to get a book deal. Their book was only part of their dream. It wasn't the whole thing, not even fucking close.

Meghan:

What makes the 2% of people who succeed at getting a book deal, who succeed at building an author platform, is the willingness. The difference is the willingness to build a big audience, to understand and work with the industry's requirements, to hire me and my team to make the path easier, to take the time that's necessary to do their best and, lastly, to have a business that's big enough to support a book deal of $100,000 or more with a major publisher. Now, that is a big mountain to climb. It often takes years to climb and in many ways, it can be a craptastic mountain. But in order to get a book deal, you must be willing to go on that journey. You must be willing to grow, and that will require you to invest in yourself beyond just working with me or a social media manager. The folks I know who have achieved that level of success usually have multiple people inside and outside of their business supporting them.

Meghan:

However, if you are like most people and you are not willing to take the journey up the craptastic mountain of audience growth and author platform development for any reason, then traditional publishing isn't likely to be the right path for you and your book. Now, that doesn't have to be a bad thing, nor does it have to mean that you are a failure. Instead, all it means is that your book and your business and how you individually operate is better suited to a different avenue. Perhaps you self-publish, maybe your book idea becomes a course or a podcast, maybe you decide to focus on growing your audience before pursuing a book. There are like millions of ways to go here.

Meghan:

Now, if you are hearing all this and think, Meghan, I want to go for it, that's great. There's going to be plenty of great advice for you in future episodes. Also, if that's, you, be sure to take the quiz. The link is in the show notes Because if platform growth is what you actually need to do next, my team and I are working on something right now to help you mine that gap. But if you're listening to this, thinking I don't know if I really want to be on social, or I don't really want a bigger audience, or I don't think that's for me, or something along those lines, then traditional publishing isn't likely the best fit for you, and that's okay. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Meghan:

My goal with this podcast is to be real, and what the questions I've been getting, both on social media and for this podcast, show me is that for a lot of you, getting a book deal isn't in alignment. It's just not the right fit. Or, if it is the right fit, if you could possibly get there. You're not focusing on platform growth, which is a big mistake. It's huge. We'll probably talk about why platform growth is so important in future episodes.

Meghan:

Huge, we'll probably talk about why platform growth is so important in future episodes. But right now, let me be crystal clear. Your author platform, which is your ability to sell books, is the biggest dream killer for entrepreneurs and experts who want a book deal. You must have a platform to be traditionally published. Nothing else matters nearly as much so if you don't want to grow a large audience, if you don't want to grow an author platform, if you don't want to grow a large audience, if you don't want to grow an author platform, if you don't want to grow your business beyond just you, then traditional publishing is not for you. Sorry, not sorry. I hope this episode has been tough to listen to, but will save you time, money and drama in the end, and regardless of how or when you publish, or even if you do, I really do mean it when I say cheers to your success.