Self-publishing is slowly but surely overtaking the traditional publishing market and more authors are choosing self-publishing over the traditional route in order to publish their work.

It is estimated that more than 90% of authors self-publish and their important reasons why this is the case.

What is even more shocking is that best-selling authors are choosing to self-publish more of their work than go through the traditional route of publishing. So, why do best-selling authors choose to self-publish?

We are going to answer this exact question with a lot of facts so that you might understand why self-publishing is actually the future. We will help you understand if self-publishing is good for best-selling authors, then it might also be definitely the best option for you.

So, let us look at all the reasons why best-selling authors choose to self-publish their work.

Here Is Why Best-Selling Authors Self-Publish Their Work

More Minute Control Over the Art

Traditional publishing is good and it is relatively less risky to publish traditionally rather than invest your own money and self-publish your own work.

But best-selling authors choose self-publishing whether it is for e-books, paperbacks or audiobooks and one of the most important reasons for that is more creative control over what they publish.

Traditional publishing is an authority which means when you publish your novel traditionally, you give some of your rights to that traditional publisher.

This means that they can hold on to rights which is not complete freedom. And since they are investing in the book, they have quite a lot of authority and say about the book.

This means they can also have their opinions and their desires regarding the content of the book. It is quite often the case that traditional publishers might ask the author to change certain parts of the manuscript for various reasons.

While a new author might be happy to comply with that but a best-selling author simply does not need to follow the authority of the traditional publisher.

That is the very reason why choose to self-publish their work so that they can have more creative control over the art and everything that goes into the book.

Freedom In Topic Selection

When you traditionally publish your book, you need to write on genres and topics that are actually prescribed by the traditional publishing house.

This is because the traditional publisher only needs books on topics and genres they feel will make a profit. They can limit your topic selection.

The traditional publishing house might also select topics based on several other factors. For example, they might have a popular book in a particular genre and they don’t want competition in that same genre and might reject your book for that reason.

But if you want to have total freedom in what you choose to write then self-publishing is the only way to do it and best-selling authors definitely understand that.

While traditional publishers might not be willing to work with you if you do not write on the topics they favour, that is not the case with self-publishing.

With self-publishing, you are the investor and you are the publisher which means you get to write on anything and everything you want provided it is not something illegal.

You get to have complete control about choosing the topic and no one is simply going to stop you from doing that.

Better From the Point of View of Royalties

Every author has the ultimate goal of sustaining their lifestyle and their livelihood with money earned from their books.

When it comes to best-sellers, they are certainly dependent on the profits and royalties their books make in order to make a living since we are now in the professional category.

That is why royalty is the primary source of income for best-selling authors. That is also why if best-selling authors can get better royalties somewhere else rather than traditional publishers, then they will definitely prefer that.

And the only place where you can get better royalties is if you self-publish your book.

This is because if someone chooses to traditionally publish their book then they can expect a royalty of not more than 20% in the case of bestsellers. New authors can expect somewhere around 10%.

The majority of the profit is taken up by the traditional publisher since they are investing, self-publishing is completely different when it comes to royalty percentages.

When the author chooses to self-publish their work, they can expect at least a 50% royalty and we are not even talking about best-sellers.

If bestsellers can come up with exclusive deals with self-publishing platforms, then they can even expect royalties as high as 70% to 80%.

And since they are best-sellers, they no longer require the distribution channels of traditional publishers and that is why they can care less about traditional publishers and go independent.

A Lot Faster Publishing Timeline

You might support traditional publishing or you might support self-publishing but irrespective of that, we all can come together and agree that traditional publishing is inefficient.

This is because traditional publishers are not just working with a single author at a given time whether they are bestsellers or not. A traditional publisher always has their hands full of work.

This means that even if they dedicate a lot of the workforce towards the best-selling author’s manuscript, it would still take a lot of time to go through the entire prep process before publication.

But with self-publishing, the author does all that themselves. The author may even have extra hands to do a lot of the prep work that would take a lot of time for traditional publishers.

The best-selling author will dedicate all their time and resources to a single manuscript which means it is going to be ready for publication months in advance compared to traditional publishing.

That is why this is a huge positive for self-publishing because the author takes all the responsibility themselves. The only considerable time in the entire process is the printing process.

This also means that the book will hit the shelves and all the online platforms much quicker and start earning money for the author. Time is money for everyone and the author depends on that money for a livelihood and that is why they choose self-publishing.

Publishing a book is not just about getting the book into bookstores but it is also about promotion and that is very important in the case of best-selling authors.

This is because best-selling authors are a brand themselves and that is why the quicker they are able to get their work published the more they are able to concentrate on promotions.

That is simply unimaginable with traditional publishing because with traditional publishing the marketing of the book is totally dependent on the publisher and not the author.

No Long-Term Harsh Contract

One of the negatives of traditional publishing is that whenever you publish your work with a traditional publisher you sign an exclusivity contract.

This means you do not hold all the rights to your book and the publishing company holds the rights to publish the book.

This fact does not change whether you are a best-selling author or you are just starting out in your authorship career.

These contracts can be very harsh and sometimes these contracts can go on for decades or as long as the copyright is valid which might vary depending upon your country.

That is why best-selling authors do not need that kind of a compromise to freedom because they are already popular and they are themselves holding their own market.

That is my best-selling authors do not go the traditional route and self-publish their own work after they gain certain popularity and readership.

They registered the book in their own name and ISBN. This means they have the exclusive rights to publish their work anywhere they want and any platform they want.

This is quite the freedom if you compare it to signing exclusive rights of publication with a traditional publishing house.

It Is an Overall Positive Experience

Self-publishing is an overall positive experience compared to traditional publishing and we are not just talking about it from the perspective of best-selling authors but any author.

The thing about traditional publishing is that if any author wants to get their book published then they might get rejected a lot.

This is very bad for the morale of the author and it is because of this that many others might never even choose to publish their work.

Even if that author is a best-selling author, they might have to wait for their work to get reviewed which is not really the best thing to do with best-selling authors.

Then again, they are faced with the question of how many books can they actually sell which is in a way disrespectful to the best-selling author.

Traditional publishing was good for the time being because it was the only option available to authors but self-publishing is actually perfect for the times we are in now.

We are in a digital age and that means everything needs to be efficient and fast and that is why best-selling authors simply do not want to go through the hassle of traditional lines.

They do not want to wait for underpaid interns to review their masterpieces and they simply want to do it on their own which is only possible with self-publishing.

An Overall Better Experience in Terms of Freedom

In order to understand this, we must understand book revisions and new editions. They are extremely difficult with traditional publishing.

A book is revised when the author brings in new changes if they stumble upon new information and they can even bring in new chapters and sections to the book without changing anything.

Doing that in the case of traditional publishing is like going through the publishing process all over again which is just as time-consuming as the last time.

But if the author wants to do it with self-publishing, then they just have to release a new version with the necessary changes and the new additions.

They just have to promote the fact that they have a new version available and it is just as simple as that and that is unimaginable in the case of traditional publishing.

Even if the author does not want to revise the text but they simply change the book cover then they can do it with complete freedom when it comes to self-publishing.

Perhaps the author wants to create a new book cover or a new book jacket with critical reviews as well as awards the book has won as well as copies sold then it is very easy with self-publishing.

Doing the same thing is cumbersome with traditional publishing and would require a hundred approvals from all levels.

There are so many other reasons why best-selling authors are choosing self-publishing over traditional publishing. Traditional publishing is definitely reliable, but just not up to date with current times.

And if you are looking for the reliability of traditional publishing with the benefits of self-publishing then we are here for you.

We are Orange Publishers and we are the fastest-growing and most popular publishing company in India with decades worth of experience in publishing.

We do everything in-house which includes the editing to the proofreading as well as illustrations and book cover designing. We also take care of everything related to the book which includes the book format setting.

We also take care of the legal side of things and the printing and publishing as well as promotion in-house.

We welcome you to visit our website and check out all we have to offer.

Common Self-Publishing FAQs

Why do authors self-publish?

There are multiple reasons why authors self-publish and one of the reasons might be that there is no need for waiting to get accepted and selected which is the case with traditional publishing.

If an author chooses to self-publish then they do not have to wait for anybody to approve their work and they can just go ahead with the publishing themselves.

Speaking of publishing, with self-publishing, authors get complete freedom and control of their work and they do not need to listen to any requests for changing the manuscript. This is sometimes the case with traditional publishing.

The royalty structure is also quite good in the case of self-publishing because in self-publishing the author is also the publisher and that is why they get to keep most of the profits.

Why self-publishing is a good idea?

Self-publishing is a good idea because of the level of freedom you are going to get and while you need to invest in your own book but you get to be the final authority on the book.

With self-publishing you also get to keep most of the profits which is not the case with traditional publishing and the royalty structure is much better with self-publishing.

With self-publishing you also get freedom and you are not bound by any exclusive rights agreements or contracts and you can publish your book on any platform you want.

These are just a few of the multiple positive reasons why self-publishing is not only a good idea but a good alternative to traditional publishing.

Is self-publishing a good option?

Self-publishing is a good option for everyone because you get to invest as much as you want and if you have a smaller budget, you can publish a small number of copies and vice versa.

Self-publishing is actually a better option than traditional publishing because with self-publishing you get to have complete control over the publication as well as the distribution of your book.

While traditional publishing was the best simply because of the distribution channels but that is not the case nowadays because you have excellent online platforms to sell your book and you do not need to worry about distribution.

That is why self-publishing is a good option for best-selling authors too because they get to publish according to their budget and if you are new you get to publish according to your budget. On top of that, you get to keep most of the profit.

Are self-published authors successful?

We can think of a hundred names of some of the most successful self-published authors to establish the fact that self-published authors are successful but we are just going to take one name which will settle the question.

Paulo Coelho. Yes, he self-publishes his works and this will give you an idea of how successful self-published authors can be.

In fact, most best-selling authors nowadays are self-published authors and even if authors start their journey by traditionally publishing, the moment they become best-sellers they tend to self-publish their next work.

This is because authors actually rely on royalties and profits for a living and that is their permanent income and self-publishing offers them better profits and better freedom.