What are the pros and cons of self-publishing versus traditional publishing?

 My seventh self-published book (and eighth overall) is just about to go into global distribution and marks my first published novel. My first six books were non-fiction, and I was fortunate to be a part of an anthology with a short story published in the fall of 2023 by a small publishing company. My latest effort was marketed to literary agents as well as to a few small publishing houses with a little interest but not enough to push the book into the traditional route of publishing. My patience diminished and having the knowledge of the self-publishing route led me back to Lulu Press which is where I had published all my non-fiction works.

Having already weighed many options I’ll share my thoughts about the pros and cons of self-publishing versus the traditional method. Every author dreams of having their book published by the big five, doing interviews on podcasts, book signings at bookstores and libraries, and of course collecting royalties on book sales and that Netflix series based on your book. In a previous post I mentioned some percentages of writers being published.

In the United States about 15% of the population has started writing a book. Of those only about 6% make it halfway through. Those who keep pushing might become published and about .15% of people in the U.S. are self-published. About 0.001367% of the U.S. population are published traditionally.

Even with that small percentage of people (roughly 40 thousand books published traditionally annually) the number of submissions to traditional publishing companies and to literary agents is staggering and very few of those submissions will be written well enough and with an eye-catching premise to be pushed into the interested pile. Even after a book is pursued by an agent it still must be accepted by a publishing company to have a chance to land on a shelf somewhere.

The popular industry statistic is that between 1 and 2% of manuscripts that a publisher receives is published. In other words, they accept one or two of every hundred manuscripts they receive. (Fiction Writers’ Mentor)

One thing I learned years ago about getting published is to ignore the overwhelming statistics and the odds stacked against you. You would have better odds of becoming a professional baseball player and winning the lottery in the same week than becoming a published author your first time out. Getting a book deal might take a few novels and even then, you’re going up against many others in the same boat. While it’s important to ignore the overwhelming odds against you it’s also important to have realistic expectations while going through the process. It's enough to make many walk away from writing.

The great thing about going the self-publishing route is that your ability to be published is in your own hands. The bad thing about going the self-publishing route is that your ability to be published is in your own hands. All the work to get your book to Amazon or even printed is up to you and comes out of your pocket. You have complete creative control and are in charge of every single aspect of making your book printable and profitable. 

With a traditionally publishing deal you would only spend the time writing before your agent takes over. You would sign your book over to them to be developed and would earn a percentage on the future sales. The book will have to be edited, pushed to a publishing company, a cover designed, and eventually marketed to potential readers. Granted, rewrites and editing might fall into your hands although you may lose a bit of creative control in many aspects of your idea for them to sell it to a publisher and for that publisher and everyone else to profit.

Traditional publishing is the favored route for most authors if the choice was that easy to get your book published. The agent takes care of most of the heavy lifting once the book is written and generally you pay nothing as you received a percentage of profits. Granted, there are a few downsides even if you can beat the odds and get a traditional deal. The time to get your book from finished on your end to published on their end could be several months to several years. Your book will be published and marketed and available to the world. If sales drop, then so will the availability of your book. Granted, this also happens with print-on-demand sellers if a global marketplace isn’t moving your product. The upside to this is that the book would still be available via the print-on-demand company no matter how few sales it has.

In the self-publishing world, you are in control of nearly every piece of the process. Once you finish the book it will be up to you to edit correctly (or find someone else who can), format the book correctly, design a cover, get an ISBN, and find somewhere to publish it. Once it’s published it’s up to you to market the book by giving out advance reader copies (ARCs), buying in bulk to sell at events, doing social media, and engaging your readers.

Self-publishing is a lot of work, but I can tell you it’s a lot quicker than waiting on someone else if you have the time, patience, and understanding of how to get through it. Like I mentioned I use Lulu Press for my publishing needs. To me it’s a pretty straightforward process, but even after a few years between publishing I had to refresh myself on some of their changes and there is a lot of help along the way. I consider self-publishing no less of an accomplishment than the traditional route, but it would still be a great thing to have someone else do all the extra work and push my work harder than I can.

What is considered a pro or a con really depends on your knowledge and ability to navigate either process. It also comes down to how much patience for each process you have and are willing to invest in time and money. Traditional publishing might be cheaper in the short and long term except for the investment in time and crafting query letters. You might make more money in the longer term, but your marketing is in the publisher’s hands for the most part. You’ll get higher profit from self-publishing, but the marketing is all up to you and will cut into that profit unless you already have an audience waiting to buy the book. With self-publishing there are also a lot of costs associated with obtaining an ISBN, getting published globally on multiple platforms (unless you just go through Amazon directly), designing a book cover (unless you do it yourself), and of course with marketing. If you have the skills to format your book, create a cover, and market your book self-publishing might not be a bad option.

Most people go the traditional route for the prestige of having your work being published by someone else and it certainly adds to your credibility as a writer. However, as I mentioned self-publishing isn’t any less of an accomplishment since it takes a lot of effort to do it correctly and most people will still be impressed by your efforts. While I would love a book deal, I feel a great sense of pride when I look at my work knowing that I put in the total effort to get it into people’s hands.