I’m nearly self-published. Why did I shun the traditional route?

​This time in two weeks and one day, my debut novel will have been published.  Not by one of the big five publishing companies, not even by one of the smaller publishing houses.  My novel will have been made ready for the market by none other than little old me.
 
Ok, so that’s not strictly true, I have had a little help – from beta readers, an editor and a cover designer.  But they were of course all pulled into action by yours truly.  I’ve had no higher power watching over me, no mentor who knows what they’re doing helping me, and I’ve had no external investment, either.
 
So I think I can safely say, getting my book this far has been driven by me: a property developer, an officer in the Army Reserves, a mum, a graduate with an Earths Sciences degree and an ex-employee of a waste management company and Amazon.  Its not really the CV of someone who you would conclude had even a vague idea where to start in the world of literary production and marketing.
 
I made the decision to self-publish back in August 2022.  It wasn’t because I tried and failed to get an agent and/or a publisher, although I should note that initially, I did throw out a handful of queries.  It was because I decided there was a better way.  So what made me decide that self-publishing was preferable to the traditional route?
 
Mmm, well.  There are several reasons.  The main one, is all about probabilities…
 
The Odds
 
From what I’ve learned about literary agents, they are a rather beleaguered bunch who will maybe take on a small handful of new clients a year, yet they often get hundreds of submissions from aspiring authors every week.  It doesn’t take the brains of a rocket scientist to work out that the chances of any individual agent taking you on, are very, very small. 
 
But let’s assume that your query was perfect, your synopsis was awesome, and your pitch did manage to prick the interest of said beleaguered agent.  What next?  They ask for your full manuscript, and if they like it, they will take you on.  Then, they will try and sell your work to a traditional publisher.  I’ve not really dug into the figures on this one, but my suspicions would be that majority of agent’s pitches to publishers get rejected.  So even if you manage to hook an agent, there’s still no guarantee of publishing success.
 
But let’s assume that you did well, you got an agent, then a publisher, surely you’re set to make your millions, right?  Wrong.  If you’re lucky enough (and talented enough) to make it this far, sure your book will be published.  Sure, it might make it onto the shelves of Waterstones.  But will you sell loads of copies?  Probability suggests not.  Most published authors don’t make enough to live off.
 
This is all sounding terribly depressing…its enough to make you give up on traditional publishing already, right?  Wrong, there’s more.  Let’s now talk about the figures.
 
Money
 
If you get a traditional publishing deal, you’ll most likely get an advance.  But it ain’t gonna be millions.  Not even too many thousands.  Most advances for first time authors are well under £10,000.  And a significant proportion of published authors never even make that back. 

Just to clarify, when you get an advance you have to sell enough books to cover whatever figure they give you before you make a penny more.  And at the rates of commission they pay you, that might take a while.  You might get a royalty of 15% on the profit of your book sales, of which your agent will take 15% of that.  Which would leave you with 12.75%.  If your books make, say, £1.50 profit a piece, you will earn 19p per book.  If you got a decent advance of £10,000, that means you’d have to sell 52,631 books before you earned a penny in excess of your advance.
 
But that’s ok, because surely my publisher will invest loads in marketing, so I’ll sell loads of books, right?  Wrong.  They won’t.
 
Marketing
 
Publishers will spend a bit of cash on marketing for you, how much depends on so many variables that its hard to quantify.  But it won’t be as much as you might think.  You aren’t Prince Harry and you aren’t selling a memoir that millions of people are desperate to read.  You aren’t a sure thing.  The publisher won’t want to gamble much on you until they know you can sell books.  You will still have to do a fair bit of work in this area yourself. 
 
This all sounds terribly depressing, right?  Correct.  Now, I should confess, I’m no expert.  I told you about my CV early in this blog post.  My ramblings above are only what I have discovered myself though spending hours reading into the subject to try to work out what to do.  But after I considered all the facts, I concluded self-publishing is the way forwards, and here’s why.
 
Why I’m going it alone…
 
I wrote my book, I got a few victims to read it.  I tweaked it, I edited it again.  I was more or less happy with it.  I read into getting it published, learnt about the odds, the money and the marketing.  I also discovered one other thing that I didn’t mention above: how long all this takes.  Assuming everything I've mentioned so far went swimmingly, you’ll be still waiting around 2 years before you see your book anywhere near a book store.

When trying to decide on a way forwards, I asked myself a few simple questions:
 
Did I want to play the author’s lottery?   No
Did I want to give away most of my earnings to other people?   No
Did I think the traditional publishers would do loads of marketing for me?   No
Did I want to wait 2 years to see my book for sale?   No
Did I have a bit of cash to throw at self-publishing?   Yes
 
Um, er, well, no-brainer.  Self-publishing it is!
 
The final question above mentions personal cash.  Because if you read everything I wrote and think self-publishing's for you; make sure you have a bit of money first, and shed loads of time.  I’ve spent around £3,000 per book on paying for editors and cover designers.  For my three books that’s £9,000.  And I’m out of cash.  I also quit my job to give time to writing.  Sure, I’m getting my book to market quickly, but only because I have the time to invest in getting it ready and trying to market the thing. 
 
Money wise, I’m doing OK.  I earn money from the Army Reserves, I have rental income as a legacy from my property development company, and I have a husband who has a decent wage.  Many people might not have these luxuries.  And if you don’t have a good financial position, or you don’t trust your ability to get your book ready for market, or you don’t think you’re cut out for any amount of marketing at all, maybe the traditional route is the way for you.  There are plenty of people who have had success that way.  But I concluded it's just not the right route for me.