Traditional vs Self-Publishing: The Real Numbers on Royalties and Control

The Decision Every Author Faces

Should you pursue a traditional publishing deal or self-publish? This question generates passionate opinions because there’s no universally correct answer. The right choice depends on your goals, your genre, your skills, and what you’re willing to trade.

Let’s examine the actual economics and control considerations—not the myths on either side.

Traditional Publishing: The Reality

The Financial Structure

Advances: First-time novelists typically receive advances between $5,000 and $50,000. Six-figure advances exist but are rare for debut authors without platform or credentials. The median first-time advance is closer to $10,000. Big Five publishers (Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, Macmillan) offer higher advances than small presses, but they’re also harder to land.

Important context: advances are typically paid in installments—on signing, on delivery of revisions, and on publication. That $15,000 might arrive as three $5,000 payments over two years.

Royalties: Standard royalties are 10-15% of list price for hardcovers, 7.5-8% for trade paperbacks, and 25% of net for ebooks. But royalties don’t pay until you “earn out” your advance—until the royalty percentage equals what you were already paid.

Example: $15,000 advance with 10% royalty on a $25 book = $2.50 per sale. You need to sell 6,000 copies before seeing any additional royalty payments. Industry data suggests most books never earn out their advances—publishers factor this into their calculations.

Timing: Traditional publishing is slow. Typical timeline from signed contract to publication: 18-24 months. Sometimes longer. You might not see royalty statements (let alone payments) for years after you finish writing.

Subsidiary Rights: Your publisher may control audio rights, foreign translation rights, film/TV rights, and merchandise rights. These can generate significant income—or sit unexploited for years. Some agents negotiate to retain certain rights for separate licensing, which is why agent expertise matters.

Print runs and remaindering: Publishers print books in runs. If sales disappoint, remaining copies get “remaindered”—sold at deep discount. The book may go out of print, though ebooks keep titles nominally available.

What You Get

• Professional editing: Developmental, line editing, copyediting, and proofreading included—often multiple rounds with experienced editors
• Cover design: Professional designers with market expertise and access to premium stock photography and illustration
• Distribution: Access to bookstore placement, library sales, airport bookstores, and international markets
• Marketing support: Varies dramatically by publisher and book, but includes catalog placement, review copies, trade advertising, and industry networking. Debut authors typically get minimal support; lead titles get substantial campaigns.
• Credibility: “Published by [major house]” carries weight with reviewers, awards committees, and certain readers
• Audio production: Many publishers now produce audiobooks as standard, often with professional narrators from their established talent pool
• Foreign sales: Publishers have relationships with international houses for translation deals—these can be quite lucrative in large markets like Germany, France, and Japan
• Co-op placement: Publishers pay bookstores for premium placement (tables, endcaps). Self-published authors can’t access this.

What You Give Up

• Control: Publishers choose your title, cover, publication date, and price. You have input; you don’t have veto power. Authors regularly have covers they hate imposed on their books.
• Speed: That two-year timeline means timely topics may become stale and trends may pass
• Rights: You’re licensing rights, often for the book’s commercial lifetime. Reversion clauses vary; getting rights back can take years.
• Per-unit earnings: Higher percentages go to the publisher, agent, and retailer
• Series control: If your publisher drops your series after book two, your characters may be in contractual limbo
• Pricing flexibility: You can’t run sales, change prices, or experiment with different price points

Self-Publishing: The Reality

The Financial Structure

Upfront costs: You pay for editing ($1,500-$5,000 for developmental editing; $500-$2,000 for copyediting), cover design ($300-$2,000 for quality covers), formatting ($100-$500), and any marketing. A professionally produced book costs $2,500-$10,000 before you sell a single copy.

Budget option: Some authors spend under $1,000 by learning formatting themselves, using premade covers, and doing heavy self-editing before hiring a copyeditor. Quality typically suffers.

Royalties: Amazon KDP pays 70% royalty on ebooks priced $2.99-$9.99, 35% outside that range. Print-on-demand paperbacks pay roughly 40-60% of list price minus printing costs (which vary by page count). Draft2Digital, Kobo Writing Life, and other distributors offer similar rates for reaching Apple Books, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and other platforms.

Example: $4.99 ebook at 70% royalty = $3.49 per sale. You keep 7-10x more per ebook than a traditionally published author.

Timing: You can publish as soon as your book is ready—often within months of finishing. Some authors publish multiple books per year.

Audio considerations: Producing your own audiobook through ACX or Findaway Voices costs $1,000-$10,000 depending on length and narrator, but you keep significantly higher royalties than traditional audio deals. AI narration is emerging as a controversial low-cost option.

Wide vs. Exclusive: You choose whether to publish exclusively on Amazon (accessing Kindle Unlimited subscribers) or “wide” across all platforms. Each strategy has trade-offs; many authors test both.

What You Get

• Full control: Your title, your cover, your price, your timeline, your marketing approach
• Higher per-unit earnings: Significantly more money per book sold
• Speed: Publish when you’re ready; capitalize on trends
• Rights retention: You keep all rights and can exploit them however you choose
• Data: Real-time sales data and customer information
• Price flexibility: Run sales, change prices instantly, respond to market conditions
• Series continuity: No one can cancel your series but you
• Backlist control: Your books stay available forever if you want
• Rapid iteration: Spotted a typo? Fix it today. Want to update your cover? Do it this afternoon.

What You Give Up

• Bookstore access: Self-published books rarely get shelf space at Barnes & Noble or independent bookstores
• Library sales: Possible through services like Draft2Digital, but more difficult than traditional
• Professional gatekeeping: No editor to catch structural problems before publication; no agent to tell you the book isn’t ready
• Marketing infrastructure: You’re responsible for all visibility—no publisher sending review copies to newspapers
• Credibility: Some reviewers, awards, and organizations don’t accept self-published work
• International reach: Foreign translation deals are harder to arrange independently
• Learning curve: You must master or outsource editing, cover design, formatting, marketing, advertising, and business management

The Math: When Each Makes More Sense

Traditional Publishing Favors

• Literary fiction: Lower volume, harder to market, benefits from traditional review channels and award consideration. Literary awards almost exclusively consider traditionally published work.
• Debut authors without platform: Traditional marketing helps unknown authors get discovered. Bookstore placement introduces books to browsing readers.
• Authors who want bookstore presence: Physical distribution is traditional publishing’s genuine advantage. If bookstore placement matters to you, traditional is the path.
• Authors who want the advance: Upfront payment reduces financial risk. You get paid regardless of sales.
• Authors who hate business: Traditional publishers handle production, distribution, and (some) marketing
• Award aspirants: Most major literary awards only consider traditionally published books
• Celebrity/platform-based authors: Traditional publishers pay large advances for guaranteed audiences

Self-Publishing Favors

• Genre fiction: Romance, thriller, sci-fi/fantasy, LitRPG readers are comfortable with ebooks and self-published authors. Many top-selling indie authors write in these genres.
• Prolific authors: If you write multiple books per year, self-publishing lets you capitalize on your speed and build a backlist quickly
• Authors with existing platform: YouTubers, podcasters, bloggers who can reach readers directly don’t need traditional distribution as much
• Authors prioritizing income over prestige: Higher royalties mean more money (if you can reach readers)
• Niche topics: Too small for traditional publishers to bother with, but perfect for targeted self-publishing
• Authors who want control: Every decision is yours to make
• Series writers: Rapid release schedules keep readers engaged and algorithms happy

The Break-Even Analysis

Let’s compare hypothetical scenarios:

Traditional deal: $15,000 advance, $2.50 royalty per book. You earn $15,000 unless you sell more than 6,000 copies.

Self-published: $5,000 upfront costs, $3.49 per ebook sale. Break-even at 1,433 sales. After that, every sale is profit.

The question: Can you sell 1,433 copies? If yes, self-publishing likely earns more. If you’d sell fewer than that, the traditional advance protects you.

But this ignores bookstore sales, print sales, subsidiary rights, audio, foreign translation, and long-term career considerations. The math is simpler than the decision.

Long-Term Earnings Comparison

Consider a book that sells 20,000 copies over its lifetime:

Traditional (assuming earn-out): $15,000 advance + $35,000 additional royalties = $50,000 gross. Minus 15% agent commission = $42,500 net.

Self-published: $69,800 in royalties – $5,000 costs = $64,800 net.

The self-published author earns over $22,000 more—but only if they can reach those 20,000 readers without a publisher’s help. That’s the trillion-dollar question.

The Discoverability Problem

Traditional publishers provide discoverability through bookstore placement, catalog marketing, and industry relationships. Self-published authors must generate their own discoverability through advertising, social media, newsletter building, and algorithmic optimization.

A traditionally published book that sells 5,000 copies due to bookstore exposure might have sold only 500 copies self-published. Or the self-published version might have sold 15,000 through effective Amazon advertising. There’s no way to know in advance.

Hybrid Approaches

Many successful authors do both:

• Traditionally publish one series while self-publishing another under a pen name
• Self-publish to build audience, then pursue traditional deals with leverage and proven sales data
• Traditionally publish for prestige/credibility while self-publishing for income
• Reclaim rights to backlist and self-publish older traditionally-published books once rights revert
• Use traditional publishers for hardcover/bookstore release, then self-publish ebook later
• Sign traditional deals in some territories while self-publishing in others

The industry is less either/or than it once was. Strategic authors use both paths depending on the project.

The “Hybrid Author” Career

Authors like Brandon Sanderson (who raised $41 million on Kickstarter for self-published projects while maintaining traditional deals), Michael J. Sullivan, and Hugh Howey have demonstrated that switching between traditional and self-publishing can maximize both income and reach. Traditional deals provide bookstore presence and marketing support; self-publishing provides income and creative control.

The key is understanding what each path offers and choosing strategically per project, per market, per career phase.

Questions to Ask Yourself

Before deciding, honestly assess:

• How important is bookstore presence to me?
• Am I willing to invest money upfront with uncertain return?
• Do I have skills or resources for cover design, formatting, and marketing?
• How important is timeline control?
• Am I writing in a genre where self-publishing thrives?
• Do I want editorial partners or do I want to be my own boss?
• What does success look like for me—money, readers, prestige, bookstore placement?
• How many books do I plan to write?
• Am I prepared to run a small business?
• Do I care about awards and traditional prestige markers?
• How patient am I? Traditional publishing requires years of waiting.

Neither Path Is Easy

Traditional publishing means years of querying, rejection, and waiting—with no guarantee of acceptance. The odds of landing a traditional deal are brutal: most agents reject 99% of queries, and most agented books still don’t sell to publishers.

Self-publishing means learning multiple businesses (editing, design, marketing, advertising) while competing against millions of other books. Over two million books are self-published annually on Amazon alone. Standing out requires either significant marketing skill, significant advertising budget, or significant luck.

Both paths can lead to successful careers. Both paths are littered with failed attempts. The key is choosing based on your actual circumstances, not myths about either option.

The Decision Framework

If you value control, speed, and per-unit income: lean toward self-publishing.

If you value bookstore presence, editorial partnership, and upfront payment: lean toward traditional.

If you’re not sure: consider self-publishing first. You can always pursue traditional deals later with a proven track record, but traditionally-published books can’t easily be “un-published” and self-released. Rights reversion takes years.

Research extensively. Talk to authors who’ve done both. Join communities like the Alliance of Independent Authors or attend writer conferences to hear real experiences.

And remember: the path you choose for book one doesn’t have to be the path you choose forever. Many successful authors have zigzagged between publishing models throughout their careers.