Is Self-Publishing Better for Authors Than Traditional Publishing?

Which path to publication you choose depends on your genre, available time, desire for control, and creative and business needs

Photo by Ed Robertson on Unsplash

Before I get into what I see as the main pros and cons of self-publishing (a.k.a. indie publishing) and traditional publishing, I wanted to share a bit of what I’m up to and ask for a favor. The favor is an easy one that’s free and takes mere seconds: If you haven’t already, please subscribe to my Substack personal essay publication

Open Secrets

. With my personal essay anthology book proposal on our emotional attachments to our belongings that I’m working on with my agent, the more subscribers Open Secrets has, the better I look as a candidate for them to risk their money on. I’d love to get to 2,000 subscribers by the end of May; right now we’re at a little over 1,600. Thank you! You’ll get personal essays in your inbox around once or twice a month. You can also check out our full essay archive.

Speaking of Open Secrets, ICYMI, I wrote about why I’m not on social media much anymore and how that’s improved my mental health, and I dipped my toe into podcasting and recorded myself reading the essay and giving some commentary. I recently sold three essays I’ll be sharing once they published, and the podcast Madness Cafe posted one of the best interviews I’ve ever done about my books and erotica. Here’s the video interview on their YouTube channel if you prefer to watch. I recommend their archives too; I’ve been going back and listening to a bunch of them and bought Jezz Chung’s book This Way to Change (affiliate link here and below) after hearing their excellent interview with Jezz. And on July 3, my anthology The Big Book of Quickies: 69 Erotic Stories will be out in print and ebook!

Self-Publishing (Indie) vs. Traditional Publishing

Now, onto a question I’m often asked by students and erotica consulting clients: Is self-publishing a better option for authors than traditional publishing?

I’m not an expert, just someone who’s been working with publishers since 2014 as an anthology editor, an avid reader and observer, and journalist who’s covered the publishing industry extensively. Here’s my most basic two cents before I dive into the pros and cons of each: Nobody can actually answer this question for you. It depends on what you are looking for out of publishing and your writing career, how much time, energy, money, and what type of skills you bring to the table, what your genre is, whether you’re publishing one book or have many books in mind, whether you prefer having total control and responsibility over every aspect of publishing (and can execute those responsibilities), and many other factors.

My best advice for trying to figure out what’s right for you is to talk and follow authors in your genre (and subgenre, where applicable) to see what they’re doing, and ask people who’ve gone the self-publishing route as well as the traditional publishing route about the highs and lows of their experiences. You also don’t have to do only one or the other; lots of authors right now choose various options depending on the project, their publishing schedule, and what best suits a particular book’s needs.

I also want to clarify that both options have multiple paths you could take, and there’s also hybrid publishing, which is a whole other option that I don’t have room to dive into here. With self-publishing some of the option are: Amazon only with Kindle Direct Publishing so your books are in Kindle Unlimited, or “going wide,” meaning having your books on multiple platforms, or putting out the books yourself and marketing them directly to consumers

With traditional publishing, you can work with a literary agent and go for the Big Five publishers (Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin/Random House, and Simon and Schuster), most of which exclusively take agented submissions, although some imprints work directly with authors, or you could work with a mid-size press, small press, or micro-press. How much you’ll earn in royalties, how much support you’ll get, the marketing budget, etc., will also vary depending on the particulars of your arrangement with your publisher, so there are lots of things to consider even if you know you want to work with a publisher.

Caroline Donahue

at Book Alchemy has a great post about her choice to go indie, which breaks down what a traditional publisher can do for an author and where self-published authors have to pick up that design, marketing, administrative, and business work in addition to actually writing their books, and why that was the right decision for her. She hosts The Secret Library Podcast (where she’s covered topics such as moving from a Big 5 Press to a smaller press) and a devoted following, so that option makes a lot of sense in her case. For someone with no following who hasn’t published anything, the path toward success with self-publishing is likely to be more challenging (but not impossible, especially in popular genres that have an avid audience and that you can reach via keyword targeting and social media/self-promo). Caroline writes:

When reflecting on my priorities for Writing through Fear, I knew a 2026 (or later) release didn’t fit my goals. I’d spent the past few years teaching students and watching how fear choked writers up as they worked to finish their books. This book was made to help people get their books written and I didn’t want to wait to share the lessons and strategies I’ve learned.

When I work with new erotica authors who have a manuscript they’re looking to publish, I often advise them to choose self-publishing for similar reasons; they can get their work posted fast, can test out their pen name and covers and blurbs and keywords see if they’re successful and if they’re not, they can change them quickly and easily, all the while penning more smut to feed the algorithm and audience expectations. If you’re publishing a memoir that took you a decade to write and aren’t sure if you have another book in you, self-publishing may not make as much sense, since, from my understanding, one of the major ways indie authors succeed is by publishing content on a regular basis so that retailers like Amazon show their titles to potential buyers more frequently.

Chelsea Fagan chose to self-publish her debut novel, A Perfect Vintage, and spent over $34,000 to do so the way she wanted to. Note: You do not have to spend even a tenth of that much to self-publish, but paying an editor, designer, getting listed on promo sites like Netgalley, hiring a publicist, etc., are all ways you might want to spend your money if you can afford it and think it will be helpful to your book’s launch and long-term sales. Watch Chelsea’s video breaking down all her costs.

And here’s how Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Necodemus describe it in Everything That Remains: A Memoir by The Minimalists, which I’m reading for book proposal research but also learning a lot from, quoting minimalist Colin Wright (note that the book was published in 2013 so some things are outdated, like the Big Six, and I don’t agree with the distinction he’s making here but it’s illustrative of one way of thinking about this):

“When I think about self-publishing, I think of poor quality, weak writing, someone who’s not good enough to get picked by the Big Six. But when I think of independent publishing, I think indie. And when I think indie, I think artisanal and cool and raw and subversive—like indie music or indie films. I guess you could say that self-publishing is to indie publishing what garage bands are to indie bands, or home movies are to indie films.“

When Millburn replies, “Sounds like the biggest difference is quality,” Wright agrees, and elaborates:

“Yes, for the most part. Also, distribution. Which meant I needed to build a larger audience—a dedicated tribe of people who would support my work. I knew that was important. And because I wanted to own my own work, I knew I’d have to build that audience on my own. So I wrote two books and gave them away for free as ebooks. The only catch? I asked people to share those books with other people if they enjoyed them. Turns out they did. A lot. Both books have had more than a hundred thousand downloads in a few short months.”

I think what Donahue and Wright have in common, and what the successful self-published authors I’ve seen also have in common, is not just knowing their general type of target audience, but already being in regular communication with that very specific audience to build rapport and authority. Without that, it’s tough to stand out in a sea of seemingly nonstop publication of books at a time when it’s so easy to publish.

Who Is Your Target Audience for Your Books?

One way I like to think of it the audience question, which can help inform your publishing decision, is: Why did you buy the last five or ten books you bought? How did you hear about them? What made you actually purchase them vs. thinking about buying them or adding them to a list of books you want to buy someday.

I can tell you a few recent examples from my life: Podcasts are increasingly where I hear about books and other pop culture that I consume. Hearing Alex Edelman on Busy Philipps is Doing Her Best last summer, talking about grief right after I’d lost someone close to me, is why I saw his show Just for Us.

Hearing Jezz Chung interviewed and then seeing her book on display at NYC’s Yu and Me Books is why I bought hers. While on vacation in Austin and browsing at Bookpeople, I sought out romance Playing the Witch Card by KJ Dell’Antonia, who offers her own amazing and copious book recommendations at

#AmWriting

here on Substack, after following her posts for a while (and as a way of paying it forward for her interviewing me on her podcast #amwriting). I bought the Kindle edition of Minda Honey’s memoir The Heartbreak Years after hearing her interviewed by Lyz Lenz on the This American Ex-Wife Podcast and then seeing her agent post that the book is on sale in May (it’s also in Kindle Unlimited). I bought Jane Wong’s book of poetry How to Be Afraid of Everything after being so moved by her memoir Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City, which I borrowed from my local library.

I’ve been waiting to place a big Memorial Day weekend order via the Bettie’s Pages Bookshop affiliate, since I’m part of their cozy mystery book club. Most of what I’ll be ordering are memoirs and novels by writers I follow here on Substack like

Jeannine Ouellette

and

Lilly Dancyger

, and hosts of podcasts I listen to, like , who hosts Otherppl podcast, where he conducts fascinating author interviews. When a friend offered to pick up a copy of Michelle Tea’s new anthology Sluts, the first release from her new imprint Dopamine Books, for me during her event in New York on Friday night, I said yes. I’m a longtime fan of Michelle’s books, since seeing Valencia on the shelves at St. Mark’s Bookshop and picking it up.

When I’m somewhat caught up on my Kindle reading, I’ll be buying Some Strange Music Draws Me In by Griffin Hansbury because a friend recommended it.

While how you personally hear about books isn’t the only factor (and you are only a sample of one), it’s illustrative of the ways that book buyers learn about new titles. What you really need to find out is how your target readers are finding the books they buy. This will require some research, like joining groups dedicated to that genre, seeking out a community with fellow authors in your genre, following experts who pay attention to book trends, etc. You can also do great research by speaking directly to your readership. If you have a newsletter or social media platform(s), ask your audience what they’re reading and how they heard about it. This will help you build your readership and get to know specifically what they’re into, how they make purchasing decisions, what might hook them in a blurb, and what they aren’t looking for. If you have an independent bookstore near you, shop there, go to their events, get to know the booksellers (in a natural way, not a predatory one). Talk to book lovers anywhere and everywhere you can, even if they don’t read your genre. You may learn something helpful that you can apply now or later on.

How to Decide If Self-Publishing or Traditional Publishing Is Right for You

My sense is that a lot of new-to-publishing-their-work writers think the biggest hurdle is finishing a manuscript, and that once they do, if it’s good enough, it’ll magically make its way into the hands of readers. No matter which approach publication you choose, there’s still so many unknowns as to whether a book will actually sell. You can’t control everything, but you can control how you establish your presence online, whether that’s posting outtakes of your book on a blog or social media platform, posting about books you loved on BookTok, joining forces with other authors for collaborative promos, sharing your reasons for writing and inspiration for your work in progress. The sky’s the limit on how you reach readers, and you’ll need to do that whether you go indie or work with a publisher.

Ask yourself: How exactly will readers hear about your brilliant new work? If you’re writing erotica (or other genre fiction, though erotica is what I’m familiar with) and it’s about a specific enough subgenre, you can do a lot with keywords and promotions with sites like ebook deal site Bookspry. Will that be a slam dunk and make you E.L. James wealthy? It’s highly unlikely. But your indie publishing success may enable you to pay off debt or quit your day job or simply learn about what readers do and don’t gravitate toward.

Self-publishing gives you lots of room to experiment, especially if you’re publishing ebooks, because you can use trial and error and change your blurbs and covers and update the links at the backs of your books with each new release you publish and all sorts of things that aren’t possible with traditional publishers. You have lots of freedom and make a much bigger cut of royalties than you would with a traditional publisher.

But…you’re also doing ALL the work (or paying money to someone else to do it for you), and if your brain is wired mainly to do creative work, it can be frustrating and overwhelming to also do all the business and marketing and promotion, which can feel like a never-ending hamster wheel, especially when you’re starting out and trying to build your audience.

There’s no one option that’s right for everyone, and many authors do both, depending on various pen names, publishing schedules, book lengths and genres, and other factors. It’s also important to remember that for even the literally most successful authors, the writing life isn’t always a picnic. You might think Colleen Hoover has it made, with her books dominating bestseller lists and getting adapted and having ardent fans, but then you read that she’s stopped writing fiction and isn’t sure how to get back to it.

I think you can gather lots of information, and brainstorm about where you see yourself in six months, one year, five years, etc., and realistically ask yourself how you want to spend your time and energy and whether you think you can market to your readers and potential readers more effectively than a publisher can, but at the end of the day, so much of the publishing business is unknown. There’s no guarantee that even the most well-marketed book will succeed, and a book you think might not reach a wide audience could go on to be your best-selling title. That’s true whatever method you adopt.

There’s also a fine line between waiting until conditions are “perfect” to start publishing, and publishing the second you’ve gotten your manuscript edited. I always suggest starting with at least one social media platform so you have a way to reach readers ahead of your release and afteward.

Some authors are killing it with self-publishing. Overall I think it’s great that there’s an easy way to publish that doesn’t require gatekeepers. However, just because you could hit publish on a book today and readers could buy it as soon as tomorrow doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the best option for your writing career or your book(s). I’m working with my agent on my personal essay anthology because I know I don’t have the bandwidth or the skills to self-publish it and see it succeed in the ways I hope it will, such as it being out on display at bookstores like the one at Chelsea Market where I saw The Lonely Stories edited by Natalie Eve Garrett in a prime spot. I want this to be a book that will give me, as Hole sang, “credit in the straight world,” that will let me work with authors I’ve admired for years, that will help open doors for my work and perhaps lead to more nonfiction anthologies. For me, with this book, the best option is traditional publishing, but that doesn’t mean that’s what’s right for everyone.

Have questions about publishing I might be able to answer? Share them in the comments.

Want to write an essay to submit to your dream publication and learn from me in a small group virtual setting? Take my September 2024 Writing Personal Essays for Publication Class! Registration is limited to 15 people.

Want to read dozens of fascinating essays? Check out my Substack personal essay magazine, Open Secrets.

Looking for a sexy read? My collection of erotic stories Lap Dance Lust is out now print at Bookshop and Amazon (or your local bookstore or library) and ebook. Want to pen your own smut? Check out my craft guide How to Write Erotica in print at Bookshop and Amazon (or your local bookstore or library), ebook, and audio. See more of my erotica titles here.