Entrepreneurs in Music — and Don’t Forget about Mozart!

Publishing is something I decided to do myself for a few reasons. I wanted to have control over my arrangements but I soon discovered there is a price a person pays for that. Making the music presentable for purchase, using Finale in my case, was a big job and learning curve as all my music was in manuscript. Then the process of purchasing high quality paper from a distributor, then to the printer to be reproduced at the best resolution possible. Printing can be done at Kinkos but not on the do-it-yourself printers you see when you walk in the door. The machines the technicians operate, which can mass produce at high quality, are the ones necessary for a professional-looking product. Then it’s advertising and the challenge making the music available to the public.
However, the biggest reason for publishing my own arrangements was for direct contact with people. I really wanted to have contact with the musicians that were purchasing and performing my arrangements. I have enjoyed meeting and talking with many talented musicians through this process. I have directly reached more people personally and feel that could be an advantage in the pursuit of a future teaching position. So, it is what you put into it, but I feel I get back much more by publishing myself.
If self-publishing would not have been my desire, I would have been challenged with finding a publisher interested in my arrangements. It’s then the publisher’s job to produce, advertise and ultimately pay 10% of the list price to the arranger of the year’s sales for those arrangements. I also felt there was risk of my music not being made available or promoted, which is totally dependent on the publisher. This is one reason why I chose to have control over my own arrangements and publish them myself. It is quite a job which requires an investment of time and money for my music to have opportunity to make it available to the public.
Publishing my own music was a challenging adventure that happened with a great deal of help and encouragement from many colleagues, especially my good friend and panel member Douglas Richard.