Big Five, Also-Big, Book Club, Educational, Hybrid, Self — what you can learn from Ginny Rorby's publisher-sampling over nine novels

As many of you know, in my courses I often bring up one of my three life-mottos: No wind is a good wind unless you know which harbor you seek.* This harbor-should-determine-wind reminder comes up every time we discuss choosing a publishing path, because unless you know precisely what you want to get out of publishing or being published, you can’t determine the best path forward. Of course, it would also help if one knew what those many winds looked and felt like.

Ginny Rorby can help us there! Her publishing career has spanned thirty years and eight novels, with another one almost hatched. She has been published by Putnam/Penguin — you can’t get more Big Five than that. She has brought out two books with Tor/Macmillan, not Big Five but definitely Also-Big, and another two with Scholastic—Harry Potter’s U.S. publishers, known for their enormous Book Club runs. On the other side of the balance, one of her novels was published by Carolrhoda Books, a boutique imprint of Lerner, who are primarily educational publishers. And her latest two novels were published by a small (hybrid?) press, Black Rose. Now for the ninth novel that’s on its way, Ginny plans to round out her experience by self publishing.

What are the pros and cons of each of these channels? Was Big Five all it’s cracked up to be? Which was her favorite publishing experience? What made her switch from traditional to hybrid, and what did she learn from the pivot? Why is she considering self publishing now? You’ll get all Ginny’s answers in this recording, below.

Happy new year, and as always, happy writing!

Shirin

*My other two mottos are Carpe diem every bloody diem, and Hidup mesti berani, the Malay saying To live you must be brave.