Publishing Pros & Cons (Traditional vs. Self-Publishing)

I wrote The Words I Didn't Listen To and IKIGAI: Love Is Not Enough, Nor Is It the Answer from stories I needed to tell. I wanted the books, my thoughts, my words in people's hands. So I found out I could do it myself, figured out how to do it myself, and I did it myself—the writing, the editing, the design, the formatting, the distribution. All of ‘em.

I didn't deeply research traditional publishing before I chose self-publishing. I was moving fast, operating on instinct, and building from what I knew. What I've learned since is that both paths are legitimate — and both have real trade-offs worth understanding before you decide.

Here’s how to decide:

How Traditional Publishing Works

Most people picture traditional publishing as submitting a manuscript and waiting for a yes. There are a few more steps in between.

It starts with finding a literary agent — someone who represents your book to publishers, negotiates your contract, and advocates for your career. You don't go directly to a publisher. You query agents first, and top agents receive over 1,500 query letters a month. Most requests take four to eight weeks for a response. Many never come at all.

J.K. Rowling's first Harry Potter novel was rejected by 12 publishers before a small independent press called Bloomsbury took a chance on her—and only because the chairman's eight-year-old daughter demanded to read the rest of the manuscript. Bloomsbury printed just 500 copies initially and advised Rowling to keep her day job. That's traditional publishing sometimes: good gatekeepers, good luck, and good timing.

Your platform matters too. If an agent gets queries from two authors who've written books in the same genre and both projects are strong, but one author has a significant social media following and the other doesn't, the agent is more likely to choose the one with the platform. You don't have to be famous to get a deal—great writing and a strong query letter still open doors—but a built-in audience helps, especially for nonfiction.

Once you have an agent and they secure a deal, the publisher covers editing, cover design, printing, and distribution. You may receive an advance (typically $5,000–$15,000 for a first-time author) before the book goes on sale. The publisher handles the infrastructure. You trade control for support.

The trade-offs: royalties are typically 7.5% on paperback sales, and roughly 75% of traditionally published authors never earn out their advance, meaning the advance is all the money they ever see from that book. The publisher also makes final calls on your cover, title, pricing, and release date. And the timeline from signed contract to book on shelves is typically one to two years, sometimes longer.

Some extra good news is: the publishing landscape has expanded. Alongside the Big Five, hundreds of smaller independent publishers have emerged in recent years, many focused on niche audiences, underrepresented voices, and categories the traditional market has historically overlooked. They often move faster, offer more creative collaboration, and take risks the big houses won't. They may be a great place to start if you choose to traditionally publish! It’s like going to the best CUNY for your major when you know EXACTLY what you want to be when you grow up—smart move.

How Self-Publishing Works

Self-publishing means you own everything — the rights, the decisions, the timeline, and the revenue. You write it, you publish it, you sell it. You either do the production work yourself or hire people to help, but either way, you're in charge.

Platforms like Amazon KDP (which I’ve published through) offer royalty rates of around 70% for ebooks and about 60% for print books after printing costs, compared to traditional publishing's 7.5–15%. Self-published authors captured 51% of overall ebook unit sales and generated over $874 million in ebook revenue in 2022. The stigma is gone. The market has spoken.

You can publish in weeks instead of years. You keep your rights. You can update the book whenever you want—I redesigned my covers ten years in, and no one had to approve that. No one got a cut of the decision.

However,

You fund everything. A professional editor, cover designer, formatter, and marketing plan add up. There's no advance to cushion that. You're investing in your own book before it earns a cent.

You handle marketing. Some traditional publishers do meaningful marketing. Many don't; they'll put your book in the catalog and expect you to drive the audience. But even when they don't, their name opens doors you'd have to knock on yourself.

You build everything from scratch. Distribution, reviews, retail placement—all of that takes work and time. Self-publishing doesn't come with a built-in audience or a publicist.

Self-Publishing vs. Traditional Publishing: A Quick Comparison

You can also find a personality and budget-based list here.

Which Path Is Right for You?

Traditional publishing makes sense if you're writing in a category with wide commercial appeal, you want institutional credibility, you're willing to play the long game, and you can release creative control without resentment.

Self-publishing makes sense if you have a message that needs to get out, you want to own your work and your revenue, you're willing to invest in the process, and you trust yourself to execute or build the right team.

I self-published because my stories weren't waiting for permission. That was the right call for me. But I could also see myself traditionally publishing one day, and getting great joy out of that!

What doesn't work is doing nothing because you can't decide.

The book you've been waiting to write deserves to be read!

Whether you're self-publishing and need help with developmental editing, book coaching, or author platform development — or you're still figuring out your next steps — I'd love to help. Let's talk.

We Listen. And We Judge Books by the Cover.

I am a four-time author. My first two books — The Words I Didn't Listen To and IKIGAI: Love Is Not Enough, Nor Is It the Answer — I wrote, formatted, designed, and published myself. No publishing house. No budget. Just me, a laptop, and a deadline I gave myself.

And I was proud of them. I still am.

But the covers? When I look back at what I launched with, I know I could have done better. I was just trying to get the thing out. The message inside was right. The cover was an afterthought.

That cost me. My book covers felt like the ones people would scroll past, put down, and not pick back up. They felt like…book covers, and not art. Art gets revisited, talked about, shared, and is loved!

Ten years later, I redesigned them. I want to save you from this mistake.

We Say We Don't Judge Book Covers. We Do.

Let's be honest. The phrase "don't judge a book by its cover" exists because we constantly do it.

According to a 2023 survey of 2,000 adults conducted by OnePoll on behalf of ThriftBooks, 57% of Americans have bought or read a book based solely on its cover. And 80% have avoided a book because of its outward appearance: because the cover looked too plain, used a font they didn't like, or featured art that didn't match the genre.

That's not shallow. That's human. Your brain processes images faster than words. A cover makes you feel something before you read a single sentence. That feeling is a bit of a promise—maybe "this is for you" or "this isn't."

When my covers weren't doing their job, they weren't making that promise.

What a Book Cover Actually Communicates

A book cover isn't decoration. It's your first sentence.

It tells a reader what kind of story this is, whether they can trust the person who made it, and whether the content inside will honor their time. When my original covers didn't say that — when they said self-published, first draft, figuring it out — readers heard it. Even if they couldn't articulate why.

Redesigning them ten years in wasn't about shame. I actually still love my original covers. In full transparency, I love the original cover of The Words I Didn’t Listen To MUCH more than I like the original of IKIGAI. But both deserved more effort than what I gave them the first time around. The message outside finally matched what was being communicated on the inside.

A cover is your first point of sale. And research shows that redesigning a cover well can lead to increased sales! Don’t wait until there are potentially low sales to think about your first impression.

How to Get Your Book Cover Right the First Time

Here's what I learned the hard way.

1. Hire a professional book cover designer. Not a general graphic designer.

There's a difference. A great graphic designer can make something beautiful. But a book cover designer understands genre signals, thumbnail readability, spine layout, back cover hierarchy, and what makes a cover work at 200 pixels on an Amazon listing. Those are specific skills. You want someone who has them.

I actually did hire someone the second time around, before I went and designed them myself. And I hated my options.

Not because the designer was bad at design—but because I hadn't done the work of knowing what I wanted before I handed off the project and that the skills between a cover designer and graphic designer are different. So I got options that were technically fine and completely wrong for the book.

That's on me—and it's a mistake I see authors make constantly.

2. Study the covers that are already selling.

Before you brief anyone (and your designer should ask you for a brief!), spend time on Amazon in your genre. Look at the bestseller lists, not to copy, but to understand the visual language readers already associate with that kind of story. What fonts are showing up? What color palettes? What imagery? You're joining a conversation, and your cover needs to speak the right language while still standing out.

3. Build a reference folder before the first conversation.

Pull 10–15 covers you love and 5–10 you want nothing to do with. For each one, be able to say why. This is the homework that makes a designer's job possible and your outcome predictable. Without it, you're asking someone to read your mind—and that's not fair to either of you.

4. Ask for a designer's portfolio of books that have actually sold.

Anyone can show you a beautiful mockup. What you want to see is: have the covers this person designed shown up in the market? Do they understand how a cover functions in the real world — not just how it looks in a portfolio? Ask specifically about their experience with your genre. Ask what's performing.

5. Be prepared to give real feedback.

"I don't love it" is not feedback. "The title font feels too light for a memoir — I want something with more weight" is feedback. The more specific you can be about what's working and what isn't, the faster you'll get to something that's actually right.

Book Covers Aren’t Just for Books

This isn't just about books.

Your headshot. Your website. Your Instagram grid. Your logo. Your proposal. All of it is a cover. All of it is making a promise before you say a word.

I help people write and design because I've lived on both sides of this. I know what it feels like to have the right words in the wrong package—and I know the difference it makes when those things align.

The right words at the right time can change everything. That starts with the cover.

Ready to get your words — and your design — right? Let's talk.