Is It Better To Self Publish?

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For most authors, yes, it is better to self-publish. You keep the rights, you decide the price, cover and description, and you keep a much bigger share of each sale. Traditional publishing makes sense if you already have a big following or your audience cares about a publisher’s name. You can also self-publish first and go to a publisher later. Below: the money, the control, what publishers look for, and the best-of-both route.

Is self-publishing or traditional publishing better?

When I started, I chose self-publishing. Traditional publishing seemed confusing, I didn’t know anyone who had done it, and with self-publishing I could do it myself and stay in control. For me, it was right. For you, it depends, but the answer is almost always yes.

How much do you earn from each?

Self-publishing pays a much larger share. On Amazon.com, Kindle ebooks priced from $2.99 to $12.99 earn a 70% royalty (from 7-Jul-26, up from a $9.99 cap) (KDP list price requirements). Paperbacks on KDP pay 60% of list price at $9.99 and above, 50% below, minus printing cost (KDP paperback royalty).

The Authors Guild model trade book contract shows what traditional publishing usually pays (Authors Guild):

That is why many authors are shocked when they get published traditionally and find they can’t live off it. Real contracts vary, and some include an advance. If a company offers to publish your book for a fee, read is Page Publishing a vanity publisher? before you pay anyone.

Survey numbers point the same way. In the Authors Guild’s 2023 author income survey, full-time self-published authors reported a median of $12,800 from their books in 2022. Full-time self-published authors who had been publishing since at least 2018 reported a median of $24,000, up from $13,700 in 2018 (Authors Guild). The survey gives no matching median for traditionally published authors, so it is not a head-to-head comparison.

What do you control when you self-publish?

Everything. You keep the rights to your book, you can change it whenever you like, and you decide the cover, description, price, platforms, distribution and marketing. You can start with what you have, put it on the market, and learn to run ads and market it. See how to self-publish with Kindle.

I send mine through Kindle, Draft2Digital, Lulu and IngramSpark to reach as many buyers as possible. And if something isn’t working, you fix it. Don’t like the cover? Get a new one. KDP lets you update the description, keywords, categories and price after publishing. A traditional publisher locks those down, and when sales drop it usually moves on to the next manuscript instead of improving yours.

What do traditional publishers look for?

Proof that your book will sell. Their number one question is whether you have followers, or earlier books that sold. They don’t want to publish books they aren’t sure about, and they are a business that closes if its books don’t earn. Even great books get rejected, and authors like JK Rowling and Stephen King were rejected many times before their first book was published.

Publishers also take you on when you are a celebrity or well-known, have a blog, have an agent inside the industry, or have self-published books that sell. If you don’t have a platform, getting a deal usually takes a lot of time and energy. And once you have a deal, the marketing still often falls on you. Don’t expect the publisher to push an unknown author. Your book may sit on a shelf with the other spines, and a publisher may hold your rights for years.

Traditional publishing can look better on your record, and for some audiences it matters: a professor whose peers look down on self-publishing, or a business author who wants to say “I’m a New York Times bestseller.” Some people also don’t feel like real authors until a publisher picks them. If that matters to you, aim for a publisher from the start.

Am I a real author if I only self-publish?

Somebody close to me once said that selling a thousand copies makes you a real author and not a hobby writer. After a thousand sales, did I feel like one? I am not sure. My books have now sold over 50,000 copies, and I still don’t think much about the title. The question I ask is whether my books are moving in the right direction. Ask yourself the same thing, instead of whether a gatekeeper has said yes.

How long should you wait for a publisher?

Set a time limit. Will it be six months, two years, ten years? If no publisher accepts the book by then, publish it yourself. Many authors send the manuscript out again and again, and it sits in a drawer gathering dust when it could be earning money on Amazon right now. What I don’t want is your book stuck in no man’s land, not on the market and not making money, so readers who would enjoy it never get the chance. If you aim for a publisher, still build your audience while you wait.

Do I need a literary agent, and what should one cost?

If you want a traditional deal, an agent is how most authors start, and an agent should earn only when you do. Writer Beware says your agent should profit solely from commissions on sales, and its page mentions a 15% commission. It says reading fees are now relatively rare, and that most professional agents’ associations adopted policies prohibiting members from charging them. Charges that apply are accrued and reimbursed from your advance. So if someone asks you to pay a fee before they will read or represent you, treat that as a warning sign and check them out first. Self-publishing needs no agent at all.

Can I do both?

Yes. You can always go to traditional publishing later. Publish books, learn the skills, sell thousands of copies and build an email list and followers. Then a publisher sees a low-risk author and may come to you. You’ll take a lower royalty rate, but you get the benefits of a publisher. Many authors on Amazon have done it this way.

If you are still weighing it up, read is it worth self-publishing a book? and, for the other side, why self-publishing can be bad.

What have you found? Tell me in the comments if you self-published or got traditionally published. If you want help planning your route, book a free 25-minute discovery call.

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