I’m going to say something that might lose us some friends in the traditional publishing world: self-publishing is a legitimate path, and it’s often the smarter choice. Not always. Not for everyone. But the stigma that still clings to self-published books in 2023 is, for the most part, outdated. I say this as someone who runs a small press. I have skin in the traditional game. And I’m telling you that the playing field has shifted in ways that many people in my position are reluctant to acknowledge.

Let me start with the economics, because that’s where the traditional publishing narrative breaks down fastest. A first-time author who lands a deal with one of the Big Five publishers can expect an advance somewhere between $5,000 and $25,000. That’s the median range. Yes, you hear about six-figure and seven-figure deals, but those are statistical anomalies. They happen to about 1 percent of authors. For the other 99 percent, the advance is modest, and here’s the thing most people don’t realize: most books never earn out their advance. That means the royalty rate (typically 10 to 15 percent of the cover price for hardcovers, less for paperbacks) never kicks in. Your advance is your total payment.

Now compare that to self-publishing on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). You set your own price. If you price your e-book between $2.99 and $9.99, you get 70 percent of the sale price. Seventy percent. On a $4.99 e-book, that’s $3.49 per sale. To earn $10,000, you need to sell about 2,865 copies. For a traditionally published author earning 10 percent on a $25 paperback, the same $10,000 requires 4,000 copies. And the self-published author keeps earning on every sale forever, while the traditionally published author might see their book go out of print in two or three years.

The math gets even more interesting for authors who can build an audience. I know self-published romance authors clearing $200,000 a year. I know self-published thriller writers making $50,000 a month during a good launch. These aren’t household names. They’re working writers with modest social media followings who figured out how to reach their specific readers. They don’t have publicists or marketing teams or shelf space at Barnes and Noble. They have email lists, Facebook groups, and a deep understanding of Amazon’s algorithm. The gatekeepers aren’t gone, exactly. They’ve just been replaced by different ones.

But, and this is a big but, the financial upside of self-publishing comes with serious responsibilities. When you self-publish, you are the publisher. That means you’re responsible for everything a publisher normally handles: editing, cover design, interior layout, proofreading, marketing, distribution, and metadata. You can hire people to do these things, and you should, but you’re still the project manager. You’re making decisions about things you might not understand well. And the quality of those decisions determines the quality of your book.

This is where many self-published books fail. Not because self-publishing is inherently inferior, but because many self-publishing authors cut corners on production. They skip professional editing. They design their own covers using Canva. They format the interior themselves and miss things a professional would catch. The result is a book that looks self-published, and in publishing, looking self-published is still a death sentence. Readers are brutal and fast judges. A bad cover means they never click on your book. A typo-riddled first page means they return it. You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression, and the first impression in publishing is almost entirely about production quality.

My honest advice to anyone considering self-publishing is this: budget for professionals. At minimum, you need a developmental editor ($1,000 to $5,000), a copy editor ($500 to $2,000), a proofreader ($300 to $1,000), a cover designer ($500 to $2,000), and an interior formatter ($200 to $500). That’s $2,500 to $10,500 before you sell a single copy. It’s an investment, and there’s no guarantee you’ll earn it back. But without those professionals, your book is competing with professionally produced books while wearing a “I made this at home” sign. Some authors recoup that investment on their first book. Many don’t. It’s a gamble, and you should go in with your eyes open.

Traditional publishing, for all its problems, does handle all of this for you. That’s the trade: you give up control and most of the money, and in return, you get professional production, bookstore distribution, and (in theory) marketing support. Whether that trade is worth it depends entirely on your goals. If your primary goal is to see your book in bookstores, traditional publishing is still the only reliable way to make that happen. Self-published books can technically get into bookstores through Ingram distribution, but in practice, it’s rare. Bookstore buyers favor publishers they know and trust, and they’re skeptical of self-published titles.

If your goal is to maximize income per book, self-publishing almost always wins. If your goal is prestige, traditional publishing still carries more cultural weight, though that gap is narrowing. If your goal is speed to market, self-publishing is unbeatable; you can go from finished manuscript to published book in weeks. Traditional publishing takes 12 to 18 months minimum, often longer. If your goal is creative control, self-publishing gives you total authority over everything from the cover to the price to the marketing strategy. In traditional publishing, you get input on these decisions but rarely the final say.

The hybrid model is worth mentioning here. Some authors publish some books traditionally and others independently, depending on the project. This is increasingly common and increasingly smart. A literary novel that benefits from bookstore distribution and review attention? Go traditional. A genre series with a built-in audience that you want to release on a fast schedule? Self-publish. The authors who thrive in today’s market are often the ones who view traditional and self-publishing not as opposing camps but as different tools for different jobs.

I want to talk about the stigma for a moment, because it still exists and it still hurts. Among literary circles, self-publishing carries an unspoken assumption: you couldn’t get a real publisher. This assumption is sometimes true and sometimes wildly wrong. Some self-published authors chose that path strategically after receiving traditional offers. Others were rejected by publishers and decided to go it alone. The quality of the book is the same either way. But the perception differs, and perception affects everything from review coverage to award eligibility to how seriously people take you at a dinner party when you say you’re a published author.

This stigma is fading, slowly. Andy Weir self-published “The Martian” before it was picked up by a major publisher and adapted into a film. E.L. James self-published the “Fifty Shades” trilogy before it became one of the bestselling series in history. These are extreme examples, but they’ve shifted the conversation. The question is no longer “is this self-published?” but “is this good?” At least, that’s the direction we’re moving. We’re not there yet. But we’re closer than we were five years ago, and much closer than we were ten years ago.

From our perspective at ScrollWorks, we occupy a middle ground that I think is increasingly valuable. We’re not a Big Five publisher. We don’t offer six-figure advances. But we provide professional editing, design, and production support, along with distribution through standard channels. For authors who want more support than self-publishing provides but more attention and control than a large publisher offers, a small press can be the right fit. I’d be lying if I said it’s always the best choice. For some books and some authors, self-publishing is clearly better. For others, a large publisher with extensive distribution is worth the tradeoffs. The honest answer is that there’s no universal best path. There’s only the best path for your specific book, your specific goals, and your specific tolerance for risk.

Marketing is the elephant in the room for both paths. Traditional publishers provide some marketing support, but unless you’re one of their lead titles, that support is often minimal: a press release, a listing in their catalog, maybe some social media posts. The bulk of marketing for midlist traditionally published books falls on the author, which means you’re doing the same work a self-published author does, just with less money per sale. Self-published authors, on the other hand, have complete control over their marketing but have to fund it entirely themselves. Amazon advertising, Facebook ads, newsletter swaps, BookBub promotions; these cost money and require skills that have nothing to do with writing. The authors who succeed at self-publishing are often as good at marketing as they are at writing. If marketing makes you miserable, that’s a genuine argument for traditional publishing, even with its lower per-book income.

A word about Amazon, since it’s impossible to discuss self-publishing without discussing the company that essentially created the modern self-publishing market. Amazon controls roughly 80 percent of the US e-book market. Their Kindle Direct Publishing platform is the primary distribution channel for self-published authors. Their Kindle Unlimited subscription service is a major revenue source. This dominance is both empowering and concerning. It’s empowering because Amazon has genuinely democratized publishing. Anyone can publish a book. The barriers to entry are essentially zero. It’s concerning because a single company has that much control over an entire industry. A change in Amazon’s algorithm, commission structure, or policies can devastate authors overnight. Building your entire business on someone else’s platform is risky, and self-published authors should be clear-eyed about that risk.

I also want to address quality, because the quality argument is the one traditional publishing advocates lean on most heavily. The claim is that traditional publishers act as quality filters: agents and editors select the best manuscripts, improve them through editing, and only publish books that meet a professional standard. This is sometimes true. It’s also sometimes nonsense. Traditional publishers put out plenty of mediocre books, and some truly excellent books are self-published. The filter isn’t as reliable as the industry claims. What traditional publishing does provide is a floor. The worst traditionally published book is usually readable, if not great. The worst self-published book is genuinely terrible. The gap at the bottom is enormous. But at the top? The gap barely exists.

There’s one more angle I want to explore: the psychological dimension. Self-publishing requires a thick skin. When you’re traditionally published, your publisher absorbs some of the emotional burden. Bad reviews? The publisher has dealt with worse. Low sales? The publisher has other books to offset the loss. When you self-publish, every rejection, every one-star review, every disappointing sales day lands directly on you. There’s no buffer. For some authors, this direct exposure is motivating. For others, it’s crushing. Know yourself before you choose.

The flip side is that self-publishing provides immediate, unfiltered feedback. You know within days how your book is performing. You can see exactly who’s buying it, when they’re buying it, and how they’re finding it. Traditional publishing is opaque by comparison. Sales data arrives months late, filtered through your agent, and often incomplete. If you’re the kind of person who wants to understand your audience and respond to market signals, self-publishing gives you tools that traditional publishing simply can’t match.

I’ve also noticed that self-published authors tend to think of themselves as entrepreneurs first and writers second, while traditionally published authors tend to identify primarily as writers. Neither identity is better, but they lead to very different career strategies. The entrepreneur-writer optimizes, tests, and iterates. They treat each book as a product launch. The writer-writer focuses on craft, trusts the process, and hopes the market follows. The most successful authors I know, in both camps, have found a way to be both at once.

If I had to give a single piece of advice to someone deciding between traditional and self-publishing, it would be: don’t make the decision based on ideology. Make it based on your book, your audience, and your career goals. Research both paths thoroughly. Talk to authors who’ve done both. Look at the actual numbers for books in your genre. And whatever you choose, commit to producing a professional product. The market doesn’t care how your book was published. It cares whether your book is worth reading. If it is, readers will find it. Eventually. Probably. Publishing is still a gamble, regardless of the path. The honest take is that both paths can work, both paths can fail, and anyone who tells you one is always better than the other is selling you something.