Willow Wraith Press

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My goal for this article is to provide a balanced look at both the positives and negatives of indie publishing, with the hope that it will help aspiring authors choose which path might be right for them. Whether it’s the indie or traditional route is a personal decision that will vary for every author.

The Pros

You have full creative control

This is probably my favorite part of indie publishing. Unlike many traditional publishing outfits, indie authors have complete control over all aspects of their book—the artwork, the interior layout, the story itself, and any extras they might want to include. 

That’s not to say it’s an easy path (see the cons section below.) It takes a lot of work on the author’s part to produce a quality product and find the resources necessary to do so, but to be involved in the discussions of a book’s cover artwork? That’s an opportunity traditionally-published authors typically aren’t given. And there are some fantastic artists out there, who are often just as excited to help bring a book to life as the author is.

Indies can also dictate the length of their books. Most traditional publishers don’t want to risk a book over certain word counts (the word count limits vary by genre), unless the author is already established as successful. This can make it tough to query epic fantasy and some science fiction, for example, since most traditional publishers won’t touch a manuscript over 120,000 words (that’s usually around 350 pages for a 6×9-inch print book.) Both genres tend to have more page-time dedicated to worldbuilding, which in turn, makes them longer. But as an indie? You can write that 900-page chonker—and with the right marketing, people will buy it.

And writing to the current market trends? As an indie, that’s completely optional. You can follow the trends if that’s your goal, or you can write your own niche books and still find an audience. But you get to decide.

Indie authors also have the benefit of choosing which formats they’d like to publish in. Some authors release ebooks exclusively. Others offer paperbacks, hardcovers, special editions, and/or audiobooks. Ebooks tend to have fewer expenses attached to them, while special editions and audiobooks can become very pricey to create, but how much is spent and on what formats is the author’s decision.

You can set your own release schedule

Don’t like working on a deadline? Then you don’t have to. Conversely, if you prefer setting a deadline, you can do that too. But once you have a finished manuscript and cover art, you can choose to release your book at any time. No one can stop you from hitting publish on Halloween, even if it falls on a Saturday. 

The same is true for preorders. As an indie, you can set preorders months in advance, or only a couple weeks ahead of time if that’s your preference. Some indies don’t do a preorder period at all. The choice is yours.

There are better days/times to publish for marketing visibility, but some indie authors don’t follow those guidelines. They don’t have to if it doesn’t work for them or their book, but that’s part of the beauty of indie publishing.

You can easily make updates to your books after publication

This is a luxury traditionally-published authors don’t have. No matter how many times you, your editors, and your beta/ARC readers go through a manuscript, there will inevitably be a typo that slips through. Sometimes a weird formatting issue crops up that nobody noticed. It happens. We’re human.

But the nice thing about publishing yourself is that you can fix them at any time. All it takes is updating your files and re-uploading them, and usually within a few hours, all the corrections are live. This is also true for cover updates.

The Cons

It’s a lot of work

There is so much more to publishing than simply writing a book. Most authors require an editor (I say most, because there are a very select few who claim to self-edit and are able to produce great books. The vast majority of authors do not fit in this category, however, and at least one editor is essential for making their work really shine.) Finding an editor who not only does a good job, but who also understands your style can be difficult—but when you find that person, it’s totally worth it. Just be prepared to spend some time searching. (Most editors offer a “free trial,” where they’ll edit a set amount of words from a manuscript. If you’re new to publishing, utilizing a trial or three can help you determine which editor will work best for your project overall.)

Many authors also seek out beta readers for initial story feedback. Some beta readers will respond with thorough feedback and can act as a developmental editor in some cases. Other betas will only highlight things they enjoyed and/or struggled with. The tricky part is, an author will oftentimes get conflicting feedback from the beta team. Knowing which feedback to act on and which to discard takes some practice—and sometimes finding the right combination of beta readers can be time-consuming. 

Beyond the editing and beta reader phases, there’s also artwork (the cover is the big piece, but interior artwork can be important too), formatting (both cover and interior), and the dreaded M-word: Marketing. All of these pieces have to be organized by the author, unless they have the skills to do it themself. In the realm of traditional publishing, most of those items are handled by the publisher—with the exception of marketing. All authors are expected to do some marketing, no matter their path. 

Many of these items can be outsourced. Artwork is the obvious one, but some authors also hand off their finished manuscript to someone else to format it for paperback/hardcover publication. Some even outsource the ebook creation. 

Other authors will do some it themselves, but there can be steep learning curves involved, even with something that sounds as simple as formatting. Every piece of software out there has its quirks, and learning to navigate them can take time. 

It can be expensive

Traditional publishing houses take a significant cut from the authors’ royalties because they are paying for editor(s), cover artwork, formatting, etc. Since indie authors are managing those items themselves, they have to foot the bill—or learn to do it themselves. 

Many authors, like me, are incapable of making art worthy of a book cover, which means hiring a cover artist/designer. I’ve seen cover artwork range from around $40 USD to over $1000. The price is dependent on what sort of artwork you’re interested in. If you’re okay with photoshopped covers that utilize stock photos, the price is typically a lot less than if you hire an artist to illustrate your cover. As a sci-fi/fantasy author with some very unique species in my books, I opted for illustrations, so I had to save more money for that aspect of publishing. But cover art does sell books. 

(And human-made art is the only way to go, in my opinion. I personally will not buy or knowingly promote any book with an AI-produced cover—but that’s a discussion for another post.)

After cover art, the second largest expense is editing. As I mentioned above, yes, you will likely need an editor (or two.) I’m lumping proofreading costs into this section as well, since it’s another necessary piece. (And no, you can’t rely on systems like Word for proofreading. It doesn’t consistently catch homophone confusions, and often overlooks the wrong usage of “its” vs. “it’s”. I could go on, but you get the picture.)

Another expense that traditionally-published authors don’t usually have to worry about is advertising. Whether you’re placing ads on Amazon, social media, BookBub, or elsewhere, there is always a cost to run them. How much an author spends and how frequently they run ads varies, and finding a successful combination can take time and experimentation (which means some of the initial ad cost might not be recouped with sales immediately.) 

Then there are things like NetGalley or Kirkus Reviews. It costs the publisher (whether it’s a traditional publishing outfit or an indie author) to list their books on both sites. For an indie, that’s yet another potential cost to prepare for, and reviews from either can boost a book’s sales/preorders.

There are also items like physical advance reader copies (ARCs) that an indie may have to pay for themselves. Big publishers often offer early copies to reviewers to build hype prior to a book’s release, and many indies do that too. Digital ARCs are much easier to manage, but some indie authors choose to offer physical copies on their own dime. 

Scams are everywhere—and they like to target indies

As if publishing books isn’t already costly enough, multitudes of scammers want your money too. Some will slide into your social media DMs, feigning friendship and promising thousands of reviews—if only you’ll pay them. Others will email you directly, touting book clubs that don’t exist or promising to boost your Amazon sales into orbit. 

Some are even more elaborate, creating fake webpages and pretending to be agents or movie producers, often using copied logos and posing as legitimate people from those industries. 

I’m sure traditionally-published authors get some of these scammers too, but since everything goes through their publishing house, they’re less likely to become victims. As an indie author, you have to be more vigilant, because you don’t have anyone else to fall back on—and the scammers know it.

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I hope this has given our readers some useful things to consider while choosing a publishing path. I personally chose to indie publish because I don’t write to market trends and I like to have creative control over my work, but every author’s situation is unique. 

The takeaway is this: Choose the path that works best for you and your book.

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Willow Wraith Press is a collective of self-published authors, editors, & artists. Willow Wraith Press is not a publishing house, nor do we accept queries to publish.

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