Infographic by: Web Site Creation.com
Self-Publishing By Numbers: Infographic
Share
Leave a Reply
Latest advice, news, ratings, tools and trends.
Inspirational Indie Author Interview: Diane Hatz on Turning Music Industry Chaos into Fiction
My ALLi author guest this episode is Diane Hatz. Diane spent years in the music industry, working at major and indie record companies, managing a band, and co-founding a fanzine on The Who that ended up in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Years later, she drew on those surreal experiences and turned them into fiction. After decades of putting off her dream of being an author, she published a four-book series in five years.
News Podcast: Rakuten Kobo Took a ‘Book Community First’ Approach to AI — and Rejected 45 Percent of Submissions
On this episode of Self-Publishing with ALLi, Dan Holloway reports on a revealing piece by Rakuten Kobo CEO Michael Tamblyn, who explains why Kobo rejected 45 percent of self-published submissions in 2025 — most of them suspected AI-generated — and frames the decision as a "book community first" choice over a "readers first" approach. Dan also returns to the Commonwealth Short Story Prize controversy, where organizers have taken a strikingly different and very human approach to AI detection: gathering notes, drafts, and timestamped evidence from authors rather than relying on AI detection tools. He closes with news of a BISG and BookNet Canada survey on AI in publishing that indie authors in the US and Canada are encouraged to take part in.
News Summary: Librarians Propose Fairer E-book Pricing Model; Commonwealth Prize Verifies Winners without AI Detectors
Following on from recent discussion in this column about what it costs libraries to buy the license for e-books, thanks to Jane Friedman for linking to this fascinating article which outlines exactly what libraries would like to see in this regard. What it attempts to describe is what librarians actually mean when they call for fairer pricing from big publishers.
[…] it by next week. Until then, here’s a swell infographic I stumbled on published by the Alliance of Independent Authors (not sure why, but their acronym is ALLi). Check it (and them) […]
Very informative. I’m seeking to e-publish my first self-help book and climbing the learning curve. There have been a few surprises enroute. However, this information just made it somewhat easier. Thanks.
This one real nice Infographic deserves a special place on Pinterest. I pin it to my board right now.
[…] do want to publish a pbook, then, it generally makes sense to go with POD as the first option. Â See this infographic for a good comparison of offset printing vs print on […]
This is incredibly useful. All the writers I talk to want to know more about how one stacks up against the other. Of course there’s more to it, there always is, but there are a load of great starting points here. Lovely to have a cool graphic to point people to, so thanks!
Very informative. The only figures missing are the per hour labour costs for the marketing required for the two alternatives.
(Nobody claims that traditional publishing offers the active marketing it perhaps once did, but without it’s endorsement the self-publisher has to work longer and harder, and to the detriment of any time for the next book…except some brilliant fiction writers who are ‘hailing’ from an established platform.)
I would be interested in those figures.
We’ve just been alerted by Kristen Jensen that the figure for Amazon ebooks is out of date / a bit inaccurate, implying that it’s 70% on all books. Please adjust your screens accordingly.
This is excellent, just what I needed. As my ‘other’ profession is accountancy, I am always analysing my costs, sales income and wondering how it compares to traditional publishing and print on demand etc.
Thank you so much for this informative post.
Glad to be of service Helena!
Interesting article. However, if you’re a first time romance author with Harlequin or other traditional publishers, the advance is more like $1000 to $4000, unless things have drastically changed in the last few years, which I really doubt.
I know Grace, and advances are largely on the way down, everywhere, since…