Self-Publishing vs Traditional Publishing

KDP figures come from KDP Help. Traditional figures are the standard terms the Authors Guild describes, so a real contract can differ.

When you publish through KDP, you are the publisher. KDP’s getting-started page says publishing with KDP gives you full rights to your book, and its Terms and Conditions spell out how: you keep the copyright, Amazon’s license to sell the book is nonexclusive, and you can end the agreement at any time. You set the list price within KDP’s limits and can unpublish a book whenever you like; KDP says it takes up to 72 hours to come off sale.

The one exclusivity is optional. Enroll an ebook in KDP Select and KDP includes it in Kindle+ (formerly Kindle Unlimited), where you earn from pages read, as our guide to KENP explains. In exchange, the ebook must be exclusive to the Kindle Store for each 90-day period, renewing automatically unless you turn that off. Print editions can still be sold anywhere.

A traditional deal works the other way round. The Authors Guild’s guide to its model contract says almost every contract gives the publisher exclusive rights to publish the book in English in the US, in print and as an ebook, usually for the whole term of copyright: the author’s life plus 70 years. You normally keep the copyright itself, and an out-of-print clause, which the Guild says every trade contract should have, can return the rights once the book stops selling.

Creative control follows the rights. Even the Guild’s model contract leaves the format, cover price and cover to the publisher, along with its advertising and promotion, though the author may promote the book independently.

KDP pays a fixed share of each sale. Its eBook Royalties page offers two plans: 35% of the list price without VAT, or 70% of the list price without VAT minus a delivery cost, which the Digital Book Pricing Page sets at $0.15 per MB on Amazon.com. The 70% plan applies only to sales to customers in KDP’s 70% territories and, on Amazon.com, to list prices from $2.99 to $12.99.

For print, the Paperback Royalty page sets the royalty as the rate times the list price, minus the printing cost. On Amazon.com the rate is 60% at $9.99 and up and 50% below that; sales through Expanded Distribution earn 40% of the list price, minus printing.

Traditional royalties are smaller percentages. The royalties section of the Authors Guild model contract uses the largest publishers’ standard hardcover rates: 10% of the list price on the first 5,000 copies, 12.5% on the next 5,000 and 15% after that. The Guild’s commentary says many publishers pay 7.5% of the retail price on trade paperbacks and that 25% of net receipts has become the standard ebook rate. Smaller publishers often pay on net receipts, which the Guild says tend to be about half of the list price.

The numbers are not like for like. A KDP royalty is what remains after Amazon’s share and printing, and you have already paid for everything else. A traditional royalty is your share after the publisher has paid for editing, design, printing, distribution and marketing.

Take one book in two editions on Amazon.com: a $4.99 ebook with a 2 MB file and a 280-page black-and-white paperback at $14.99, regular trim. The figures use KDP’s rates and printing cost ($1.00 plus $0.012 a page), the same rules as our KDP royalty calculator. The last row applies a 7.5% traditional royalty to the same paperback.

Per copy, self-publishing wins easily: $4.63 against $1.12 for the same paperback. Costs change the picture. Every $1,000 you spend on editing and a cover takes about 216 paperback sales, or 305 ebook sales on the 70% plan, to earn back. A traditional author pays nothing up front, and each $1,000 of advance takes nearly 900 paperback sales to earn out, but the author keeps the advance even if those sales never come.

The advance is the traditional path’s biggest draw: money before the book sells. The Authors Guild’s model contract calls it a non-refundable advance against royalties, and its commentary says payment in three, four or even five installments has become common, tied to milestones such as signing, acceptance and publication.

Royalties start only once the book has earned out its advance. The Guild’s guide to advances says many, if not most, books from major publishers never get there; the author keeps the money and the publisher absorbs the loss. It also notes that many small, independent and academic presses pay no advance at all.

Once the book is out, the Guild says most large trade publishers account and pay twice a year, and that almost all publishers hold back part of the royalties, especially early on, as a reserve against bookstore returns.

KDP pays no advance but pays monthly: about 60 days after the end of the month in which the sale was reported, or 90 days for Expanded Distribution, once you reach the minimum payment threshold. Our guide to KDP reports shows where to see what you will be paid.

On the traditional path, the publisher does. The Authors Guild’s guide to hybrid publishing contracts lists what a traditional publisher handles instead of the author: editing, design, printing, distribution and marketing. That is what the smaller royalty pays for.

On the self-publishing path, you do. KDP does not charge you to publish, and a paperback’s printing cost comes out of each sale. Editing, proofreading, cover design, formatting and ads are your decisions and your bills. KDP offers tools such as Cover Creator and a list of independent service providers, which Amazon says it does not endorse. Our guide to what it costs to self-publish a book goes through those bills one by one.

Plan to promote the book yourself on either path. A self-published author runs all of it, for example through Amazon Ads, where KDP Help notes you set your own budget. Our guide to profitable Amazon ads for books covers keeping that spend under control, and how to market a self-published book covers the other channels.

Self-publishing is quick once the files are ready. KDP’s Timelines page says a submitted book takes three business days to go live, though low-content books such as journals can take three to four weeks to review.

Traditional publishing is a series of waits. First you find an agent. Then the agent submits the manuscript to editors, and Penguin Random House’s guide for writers says that can take several rounds of submissions over weeks or even years. Once a publisher accepts the finished manuscript, the Guild says standard contracts give it 12 to 18 months to publish, with 18 far more typical.

KDP can sell your ebook in every Kindle Store, from Amazon.com to Japan, Brazil and India, and your print editions on Amazon. For stores beyond Amazon, paperbacks can use Expanded Distribution: KDP offers the book to distributors in the US and UK, so bookstores, online retailers, libraries and academic institutions can order it.

KDP is plain about the limits. Distributors may not accept the book and no store has to order it, hardcovers are not eligible, and an accepted book can take up to eight weeks to reach booksellers. An ISBN assigned by KDP can only be used on KDP and shows the imprint as “Independently published”; an ISBN you buy can carry your own imprint.

A traditional publisher handles distribution to bookstores and the wider trade, as the Authors Guild’s list of publisher services shows. For a book sold mainly in bookstores, that reach can matter more than the royalty rate. Self-publishers can also go beyond KDP; our comparison of self-publishing platforms covers IngramSpark, Draft2Digital and the other stores.

You do not need an agent to publish on KDP, where each book goes through a review against KDP’s content and formatting guidelines. For a traditional deal you usually do. Penguin Random House says most major publishers, itself included, have historically not accepted unagented submissions, and that an agent is still required and advisable in most cases, though some imprints run open submission programs.

An agent pitches your book to editors, negotiates the contract and makes sure payments arrive. Agents earn a commission on what they sell, which the Authors Guild says tends to be 15%; on the $1.12 paperback royalty above, that leaves about 95 cents. Penguin Random House warns about scams that charge writers up front and repeats the common saying that “money flows toward the author”.

Some companies sit in between and call themselves hybrid publishers. The Authors Guild describes the model: like a traditional house, the publisher handles editing, design, printing, distribution and marketing, but the author pays part of the costs up front, from a couple of thousand to tens of thousands of dollars, and receives a much higher royalty, commonly upwards of 50% of net receipts. The Guild says some hybrid publishers are respected and others are not, that their contracts often favor the publisher, and that you should check any company against the Independent Book Publishers Association’s Hybrid Publisher Criteria before signing. Among other things, those criteria expect a hybrid publisher to vet submissions, publish under its own imprint and ISBNs, and distribute books beyond uploading files to online retailers; IBPA calls a company that misses any of them a self-publishing service provider, not a hybrid publisher.

Neither path wins for every book. The pros and cons of self-publishing come down to these trade-offs:

• You want money before the book sells: only the traditional path pays an advance, and it is the slower path.
• You want control of cover, price and schedule: self-publishing keeps those decisions, and the rights, with you.
• Your readers buy ebooks on Amazon: self-publishing reaches them directly, and KDP Select also puts the ebook in Kindle+.
• Your readers buy in bookstores or borrow from libraries: a publisher’s distribution counts for more.
• You can fund the work up front: editing, a cover and ads are a self-publisher’s costs, recovered only through sales.
• You want the book out soon: days on KDP, against 12 to 18 months after acceptance.

You do not have to choose once for every book. If you sign a traditional contract and plan to self-publish other titles, read its non-compete clause first: the Authors Guild says standard contracts often restrict books that compete with the contracted one or are based on its material.

Self-publishing makes you the publisher, accounts included. Royalties arrive in your KDP reports, ad spend sits in Amazon Ads, and neither shows what a book earns after its ads. A spreadsheet that joins the two, book by book and month by month, is worth keeping even by hand.

If you would rather not rebuild it every month, SelfPub Go’s royalty analytics reads the KDP report you already download and puts it next to your Amazon Ads campaigns, so you see profit per book after ads.

KDP rules here come from KDP Help as of the date at the top of the page, using Amazon.com prices. Traditional terms are typical ones, and every contract is negotiated on its own.