A common criticism about POD service companies, from the “traditionally published” crowd, is that money should flow towards an author’s pocketbook, not away from it.

Dehanna Bailee has a great explanation as to why that isn’t the case in traditional publishing. Money starts flowing out the authors’ pockets the minute they start querying agents.

I’d add that traditionally published authors give up all rights to their work (POD authors don’t, or shouldn’t anyway). And that value is undetermined at the time those traditionally published authors sign their contracts. So a traditional publisher might be getting a steal if they paid next to nothing for the manuscript.

That is not to say there are plenty of unscrupulous POD companies. There are. But if you keep your setup costs low, keep all your rights, and can easily get out of any contract, you can use POD to test the market while you shop the book around to traditional publishers. Then you’ll know the book’s value before you enter negotiations to sign away the rights.