Self-publishing vs traditional publishing in Australia

We are a publishing services company, so you would expect us to argue for self-publishing. We are not going to. For some books a traditional deal is clearly the better outcome, and an honest comparison is more useful to you than a pitch.

Money flows in opposite directions

This is the headline difference. A traditional publisher pays you an advance against royalties and carries every production cost. Self-publishing reverses it: you pay the costs and keep the royalties.

• Australian debut advances are commonly in the low thousands, often paid in instalments on signing, delivery and publication.
• Traditional royalties are typically around 10% of the recommended retail price on print, and higher on ebooks, paid twice a year.
• Self-published royalties run far higher per copy — the retailers publish their rates — but you have spent money up front to get there.

The arithmetic that matters is not which number is bigger, it is how many copies you expect to sell over five years. A book that sells steadily in small numbers usually earns the author more self-published. A book with a real marketing push behind it can earn more traditionally, because the push shifts volume no individual can match. Our publishing packages and prices set out what the up-front side actually costs.

Time: months against years

Self-publishing a standard novel takes four to six months from the first editorial read to being on sale. Traditional publishing takes a year or more of submissions before anyone says yes, and then twelve to twenty-four months to publication. Children’s publishing is slower again.

If your book is tied to a date — an anniversary, an event, a topical argument — traditional publishing may simply be too slow, regardless of its other merits.

Rights: licensed or kept

A traditional contract licenses rights to the publisher, often for the life of copyright, and usually includes territories and sometimes audio, translation and film options. You keep copyright, but you no longer control what happens to the book.

Self-published, you keep everything, including the right to change the price on a whim, pull the book, re-cover it, or licence audio separately. You also keep the ISBN in your own name, which is worth checking in any services contract — some companies register it to themselves, which makes moving the book later genuinely difficult. Ours never do; see ISBN registration and copyright.

Control: cover, title, text

Traditionally published authors are often surprised by how little say they have over the cover and sometimes the title. That is not publishers being high-handed; it is that their sales team knows what sells into shops, and the author is one voice in a commercial decision.

Self-published, every decision is yours, which is both the benefit and the risk. A good services company tells you when a decision is wrong — we will show you your preferred cover at thumbnail size beside your category page — but it is still your call, and plenty of self-published books fail on decisions the author insisted upon.

Reach: the part self-publishers underplay

This is where traditional publishing earns its share. Sales representatives who talk to bookshop buyers, review coverage in outlets that ignore self-published books, festival and prize eligibility, school and library channels with existing relationships — none of that can be bought, and most of it cannot be replicated by an individual.

Self-published, your book is orderable everywhere and visible online. Getting physical stock onto a table in a shop is hard, shop by shop, and most prizes exclude self-published work. In poetry that exclusion is close to total, which is why we tell poets to submit to presses first — the detail is on our poetry publishing page.

A warning about “hybrid” publishers

Between the two sits a category that calls itself hybrid, partnership or assisted publishing. Some are legitimate. Many are vanity presses with better branding, and the tell is always the same combination: you pay a fee, they take the rights, they keep a share of royalties for the life of copyright, and they sell you a print run you store and sell yourself.

Four questions worth asking anyone who wants your money for a book:

1. Who is the ISBN registered to — me or you?
2. Whose name is on the retailer accounts, and who do the retailers pay?
3. Do you take any percentage of my sales, and for how long?
4. What exactly do I own at the end, and will you give me the source files?

The honest answers are: you, you, none, and everything including the source files. Any other set of answers is a different business model and you should price it over five years before signing.

Which route suits which book

Broadly, and with plenty of exceptions:

• Submit first if you want prizes, festivals, review coverage or bookshop presence, if your book is literary fiction or poetry, or if you are writing for the school market.
• Self-publish if you have an audience already, if you are writing in a genre that sells online — romance, fantasy, crime and thrillers all do — if the book is tied to your professional credibility, or if speed and control matter more than reach.
• Do both, in order: submit for as long as you are willing to lose, then publish yourself. Self-publishing first makes a later acquisition harder, because the sales record follows the book.

The honest summary

If a traditional publisher offers you a deal, take it seriously and have a solicitor or the Australian Society of Authors read the contract. If no offer comes, self-publishing is no longer a consolation prize — done properly it produces a book indistinguishable from a trade paperback, on sale everywhere, with the income coming to you.

Done badly it produces a book that looks self-published, and readers notice within one page. The difference is almost entirely editorial. If you want to know which one your manuscript is closer to, send it for a read: that is free, and it ends with a written assessment rather than a sales call.