Self-publishing

Based on Wikipedia: Self-publishing

The Authors Who Refused to Wait

In 1847, a young woman named Emily Brontë couldn't find a publisher willing to take on her strange, dark novel about obsessive love on the Yorkshire moors. So she and her sisters pooled their meager savings and paid to have their books printed themselves. Wuthering Heights appeared that December. It would become one of the most celebrated novels in the English language.

Emily Brontë was a self-publisher.

So was Jane Austen, who financed the publication of Sense and Sensibility out of her own pocket in 1811. So was Walt Whitman, who set some of the type for Leaves of Grass himself. Virginia Woolf started her own press—the Hogarth Press—partly so she could publish her experimental fiction without seeking anyone's approval. Marcel Proust, after being rejected by major publishers, paid to print the first volume of In Search of Lost Time.

The history of self-publishing is surprisingly illustrious. But for most of the twentieth century, it carried a stigma. The term "vanity press" captured the prevailing attitude: anyone who paid to publish their own work must be too vain to accept that their writing wasn't good enough for "real" publishers.

Then the internet arrived. And everything changed.

What Self-Publishing Actually Means

At its simplest, self-publishing means an author takes responsibility for getting their work into readers' hands, rather than handing that job to a traditional publisher. The author becomes the publisher.

This doesn't necessarily mean doing everything alone. Many self-publishing authors hire editors, cover designers, and formatters—the same professionals that traditional publishers employ. The difference is who's in charge. The author makes the decisions. The author owns the rights. The author keeps most of the money.

Traditional publishing works differently. A publisher acquires a manuscript, typically through an agent who represents the author. The publisher then invests in editing, design, printing, and distribution. In exchange, the publisher keeps most of the revenue from sales, paying the author a royalty—often around ten to fifteen percent of the book's price. Publishers also typically pay an advance: money upfront that the author doesn't have to return, even if the book flops.

There's also a middle ground called hybrid publishing, where authors and publishers share costs and risks. And there's still vanity publishing, though it's become harder to distinguish from legitimate self-publishing services. The key warning sign is a contract that demands you surrender significant rights to your work.

The Kindle Moment

The tipping point came in 2007, when Amazon introduced the Kindle e-reader and, more importantly, Kindle Direct Publishing—a platform that let anyone upload a manuscript and start selling it within hours.

The floodgates opened.

Before Kindle Direct Publishing (usually called KDP), self-publishing required significant upfront investment. You had to print books before you could sell them, which meant guessing how many copies you'd need and storing them somewhere. Most self-published authors lost money.

KDP eliminated that barrier. An ebook costs essentially nothing to produce. You upload your manuscript, set a price, and Amazon handles everything else—payment processing, delivery, even printing physical copies if readers want them. The author receives up to seventy percent of each sale.

Compare that to traditional publishing's ten to fifteen percent royalty, and you can see why authors started paying attention.

Print on Demand: Books That Materialize When You Order Them

The ebook revolution got most of the attention, but equally important was print-on-demand technology, or POD. Instead of printing thousands of copies and hoping they sell, POD machines print individual books after customers order them.

The Espresso Book Machine, first demonstrated at the New York Public Library in 2007, captures the almost magical quality of this technology. It takes two PDF files—one for the text, one for the cover—and produces a complete, bound paperback book in minutes. The book literally drops down a chute at the end, ready to read.

These machines now sit in libraries and bookstores around the world. Small independent bookshops use them to compete with chains, printing books on demand rather than keeping extensive inventory. Out-of-print editions can be resurrected instantly.

For self-publishing authors, POD means no upfront printing costs and no boxes of unsold books in the garage. Services like IngramSpark let authors make their books available to bookstores worldwide—any store can order copies at wholesale prices.

The Money Question

Let's talk about what authors actually earn.

Self-published authors receive dramatically higher royalties per sale—often seventy percent compared to traditional publishing's ten to fifteen percent. On a ten-dollar ebook, a self-published author might earn seven dollars while a traditionally published author earns one dollar.

But royalty rates only tell part of the story. Traditional publishers provide advances—upfront payments that can range from a few thousand dollars to millions for celebrity authors. Self-published authors receive no advance. They also bear all production costs: editing, cover design, formatting, and marketing.

The crucial variable is sales volume. A traditionally published book that sells fifty thousand copies might earn its author the same total income as a self-published book that sells fifteen thousand copies. But reaching those sales numbers requires different skills. Traditional publishers have distribution networks and marketing departments. Self-published authors have to build their own audiences.

Most self-published books don't make much money. But neither do most traditionally published books. The difference is that self-published authors keep control—and a larger slice of whatever pie exists.

The Quality Debate

Here's an uncomfortable truth: a significant portion of self-published books are terrible.

One blogger estimated that seventy percent are essentially unreadable. That's probably an exaggeration, but it points to a real issue. Traditional publishers act as gatekeepers. They reject most manuscripts and invest heavily in polishing the ones they accept. An editor refines the prose. A proofreader catches typos. A professional designer creates the cover.

Self-publishing has no such quality control. Anyone can upload anything. The result is an ocean of content ranging from brilliant to abysmal.

A 2014 survey by Digital Book World found that traditionally published books tend to receive higher critical reviews than self-published titles. This isn't surprising—traditional publishing's selection process filters for quality, even if imperfectly.

But here's what that statistic obscures: the best self-published books are indistinguishable from traditionally published ones. Serious self-publishing authors hire the same editors and designers that publishers use. They employ beta readers—volunteers who read early drafts and provide feedback. They join critique groups where writers evaluate each other's work.

The stigma against self-publishing has faded as more authors take this professional approach. The question is no longer "is this book self-published?" but "is this book good?"

Success Stories

The poster children for self-publishing success are spectacular.

Amanda Hocking was a social worker in Minnesota who spent her evenings writing paranormal romance novels. Publishers weren't interested. In 2010, she uploaded several books to Amazon and sold a few dozen copies. She kept uploading. Within months, she was earning enough to quit her day job. Within a year, she was a millionaire. St. Martin's Press eventually acquired her series for two million dollars.

Andy Weir took an even more unusual path. He posted chapters of a science fiction novel on his personal blog, giving them away for free. When readers requested a downloadable version, he self-published The Martian as a ninety-nine-cent ebook. It became a bestseller. Crown Publishing bought the rights and re-released it in 2014. Then Ridley Scott made it into a movie starring Matt Damon.

Fifty Shades of Grey began as Twilight fanfiction posted on the internet. E. L. James eventually self-published it as an ebook and print-on-demand paperback before Random House acquired it. The trilogy has sold over 150 million copies worldwide.

Hugh Howey's Wool started as a short story on Amazon, priced at ninety-nine cents. Readers wanted more. Howey kept writing, building the story into a series. It eventually earned over a million dollars in royalties and garnered more than five thousand Amazon reviews.

These success stories share common features: authors who wrote prolifically, priced strategically, and built direct relationships with readers. They treated self-publishing not as a backup plan but as a business.

The China Phenomenon

While self-publishing in the West often means ebooks and print-on-demand, China has developed something different: a massive web fiction industry.

Chinese web fiction works like serialized novels from the Victorian era. Authors post chapters regularly—sometimes daily—and readers pay tiny amounts to access new installments. A chapter might cost a fraction of a yuan, roughly equivalent to a few American cents. But when millions of readers pay those tiny amounts, the numbers add up.

The industry generates over 2.5 billion dollars annually. Platforms like Shanda Literature publish thousands of new works daily. The most popular novels find tens of millions of readers.

South Korea has developed a similar ecosystem. Joara, the country's largest web novel platform, reports over a million members and 140,000 active writers. Writers post an average of 2,400 serial installments per day.

This model inverts some assumptions about self-publishing. The books aren't finished products sold complete—they're ongoing serials where reader feedback shapes the story. Authors who can't sustain reader interest simply stop earning. It's a brutally meritocratic system, and it's produced some of China's bestselling fiction.

The Speed Advantage

Traditional publishing moves slowly. After finishing a manuscript, an author might spend months or years finding an agent. The agent might spend additional months finding a publisher. Once a publisher acquires the book, it typically takes twelve to eighteen months before the book reaches shelves.

Self-publishing can happen in weeks.

An author finishes a manuscript, hires an editor and cover designer, formats the text, and uploads to distribution platforms. Some authors publish within thirty days of completing their first draft—though this usually isn't wise. More typically, a self-published author might take three to six months from finished first draft to publication, allowing time for proper editing and revision.

This speed matters beyond just impatience. Authors writing about current events need to publish before their subjects become old news. Romance authors, who often release multiple books per year to maintain reader interest, can't wait eighteen months between titles. Series writers can keep momentum going rather than losing readers to long gaps.

Speed also enables experimentation. Traditional publishers make careful bets, investing significant resources in each title. Self-publishers can try things quickly. A book that doesn't find an audience cost relatively little to produce. A book that takes off can be followed rapidly with sequels.

The Distribution Challenge

For all its advantages, self-publishing faces one persistent difficulty: getting books into physical stores.

Traditional publishers have established relationships with bookstore chains and libraries. Their sales representatives visit stores regularly. Their distribution networks ensure books appear on shelves. Their marketing departments arrange author tours and media coverage.

Self-published authors can make their books available to bookstores through services like IngramSpark, but that doesn't mean stores will actually stock them. Bookstores have limited shelf space and tend to fill it with titles from publishers they know. A self-published book might be orderable, but invisible.

Libraries present similar challenges. While some have become more receptive to self-published books—the Library Journal even partnered with Biblioboard to create a platform for discovering self-published titles—most still favor traditional publishers.

This matters less than it once did. Online sales now dominate the book market. Amazon alone accounts for roughly half of all book purchases in the United States. For many readers, especially those buying ebooks, the distinction between self-published and traditionally published books is invisible.

But for authors who dream of seeing their books in airport bookstores or their local library, self-publishing still presents obstacles.

The Platforms

Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing dominates the self-publishing landscape, but it's far from the only option.

Apple Books (formerly the iBookstore) lets authors sell directly to iPhone and iPad users, typically paying seventy percent royalties. Barnes & Noble offers similar terms through its Nook Press platform. Kobo, a Canadian company, provides access to international markets where Amazon has less presence.

Smashwords pioneered ebook distribution, converting manuscripts into multiple formats and distributing them to various retailers. Its founder, Mark Coker, has been an influential voice in self-publishing advocacy.

For print books, IngramSpark offers the widest distribution to physical bookstores and libraries. Lulu provides print-on-demand services with a user-friendly interface. Books on Demand, a German company founded in 1997, claims to be the original self-publishing service.

Reedsy takes a different approach, operating as a marketplace connecting authors with freelance editors, designers, and marketers. Rather than offering publishing services directly, it helps authors assemble the team they need.

Many successful self-publishers distribute through multiple platforms simultaneously, though Amazon's terms often encourage exclusivity through its Kindle Unlimited subscription program.

The AI Question

Artificial intelligence has introduced new tensions into self-publishing.

On one hand, AI tools can help authors with tasks traditionally handled by publishers. Grammar checkers and prose analyzers have become sophisticated. Design tools can generate cover concepts. Marketing platforms use AI to target potential readers.

On the other hand, AI can now generate entire books. A company called Spines has announced plans to publish eight thousand AI-generated books in 2025. The quality of such works remains questionable, but the volume is staggering.

This has intensified concerns about quality control. If anyone could upload a book before, now bots can upload thousands. Amazon has already begun limiting how many books a single account can publish per day, suggesting the platform recognizes the problem.

Legal questions loom. In September 2023, the writers of Game of Thrones sued OpenAI, alleging that ChatGPT was trained on copyrighted material. If AI models learned to write by reading published books, who owns what they produce?

The self-publishing community, which has always championed author independence, now faces a strange irony: the same technological forces that liberated authors from gatekeepers may be flooding the market with machine-generated content that makes human-authored books harder to find.

The Academic Angle

Self-publishing has a troubling cousin in academic journals. Research has found that about a quarter of journal editors publish ten percent or more of their own articles in the journals they edit.

This is ethically problematic in ways that self-publishing a novel is not. Academic journals are supposed to provide peer review—independent evaluation of research quality. When editors publish their own work, they're essentially reviewing themselves.

This practice reminds us that gatekeeping, for all its frustrations, serves real purposes. Traditional book publishers may reject good manuscripts, but they also reject bad ones. Academic peer review may be slow and imperfect, but it provides some check on quality claims.

Self-publishing works best when authors replicate the useful parts of traditional quality control—editing, design, careful revision—while discarding the parts that merely slow things down.

Where Things Stand

Self-publishing has transformed from a last resort to a legitimate first choice. The stigma hasn't entirely disappeared, but it has weakened considerably. When a self-published book wins readers, few ask how it was published.

The economics favor self-publishing for certain kinds of authors: those who write prolifically, those who understand marketing, those willing to treat writing as a business. Traditional publishing still offers advantages for authors seeking prestige, those who prefer to focus solely on writing, and those whose books benefit from extensive editorial investment.

The forty authors who sold over a million ebooks on Amazon between 2011 and 2016 prove that self-publishing can produce genuine hits. But they represent a tiny fraction of the millions who tried. Most self-published books sell a handful of copies to friends and family.

What has changed definitively is access. Anyone can now publish a book and make it available worldwide. Whether anyone reads it is another question—but at least the gatekeepers no longer hold the only keys.

Virginia Woolf, who started her own press to escape the constraints of traditional publishing, would probably understand the appeal. So would Walt Whitman, who set his own type. So would Emily Brontë, who paid to print a book that critics of her time dismissed but readers have loved for nearly two centuries.

The technology has changed. The dream—to write something and put it into readers' hands—remains the same.