Digital Book World and Writer’s Digest asked 5,000 authors what factors influenced their decisions between traditional and self-publishing. Without reading the full (expensive) report, the accompanying chart is ambiguous because it merely states what factors influenced the decision, but not which direction authors were influenced. If you and I both consider “Publisher prestige” a factor, and it causes you to pursue traditional publishing, but causes me to choose self-publishing, the factor itself has limited value without the reasoning behind it.
These are, in fact, important factors; too important to leave to the ambiguity of a simple chart. Let’s clarify, shall we? As usual, I’ll fall back on opinion. Mine, of course. Where I see shades of grey I’ll say so, but where I see black and white, expect hyperbole.
Reading a public forum today, I ran across a lengthy comment by a member of the traditional publishing industry.