Self-publishing is the publication of any book or other media by the author of the work, without the involvement of an established third-party publisher. The author is responsible and in control of entire process including design (cover/interior), formats, price, distribution, marketing & PR. The author can do it all themselves or outsource all or part of the process to companies that offer these services such as Lulu, iUniverse, CreateSpace and a multitude of others.

In 2008, for the first time in history, more books were self-published than those published traditionally. In 2009, 76% of all books released were self-published, while publishing houses reduced the number of books they produced.

Technological advances have enabled this growth:

• Print-On-Demand technology which can produce a quality product equal to those produced by traditional publishers – in the past, you could easily identify a self-published title because of its quality.
• Online retailing where dominant players like Amazon.com have enticed readers away from bookstores into an online environment.
• Technological advances with ereaders and tablets that enhance readability and allow readers to 'carry' numerous books in a concise, portable product.

The stigma of self-publishing is quickly eroding with many best-selling authors choosing to self-publish their work. For example, J.K. Rowling will sell the e-book versions of the Harry Potter

Harry Potter

Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by the British author J. K. Rowling. The books chronicle the adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter and his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...

 series directly from her new website, Pottermore

Pottermore

Pottermore is a website by J. K. Rowling, developed by TH_NK and sponsored by Sony. The website, according to Rowling, will serve as a permanent online home for the wizarding world of Harry Potter. The site will feature many of J.K...

. The estates of Ian Fleming

Ian Fleming

Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer.Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, one of the biggest-selling series of fictional books of...

, Barbara Cartland

Barbara Cartland

Dame Barbara Hamilton Cartland, DBE, CStJ , was an English author, one of the most prolific authors of the 20th century...

 and Catherine Cookson

Catherine Cookson

Dame Catherine Cookson DBE was a British author. She became the United Kingdom's most widely read novelist, with sales topping 100 million, while retaining a relatively low profile in the world of celebrity writers...

 are also publishing their authors' printed work as e-books and selling directly to public.

Business aspects

The key distinguishing characteristic of self-publishing is that the author has decided to publish their work independent of a publishing house. Long gone are the days when self-published authors had to spend considerable amounts of money preparing a book for publication, and to purchase bulk copies of their title and find a place to store them. Print-On-Demand technology means the author, via numerous, accessible global distribution channels like Amazon.com

Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...

, can have a book printed only when an order has been placed and it is available for purchase world-wide.

Vanity publishing

The term 'vanity publishing' is mostly obsolete today as a company contracting with an author to assist with the production of a book is considered 'self-publishing', not vanity publishing. The author may engage a company that offers services—usually designed as publishing packages including editing, marketing, design, etc.—and outsource all or part of the process to these companies.

There remains, however, a small number of companies that refer to themselves as a 'publisher' but only offer to publish an author for a fee. These are 'vanity publishers' and should be distinguished from the above companies that offer services to the independent author and do not pretend to be a publisher. These companies make the majority of their income from the fees paid by the author and not from sales as would be the case with traditional publishers. These companies are also known as joint venture

Joint venture

A joint venture is a business agreement in which parties agree to develop, for a finite time, a new entity and new assets by contributing equity. They exercise control over the enterprise and consequently share revenues, expenses and assets...

 or subsidy

Subsidy

A subsidy is an assistance paid to a business or economic sector. Most subsidies are made by the government to producers or distributors in an industry to prevent the decline of that industry or an increase in the prices of its products or simply to encourage it to hire more labor A subsidy (also...

 presses.

Marketing & Promotion

In today's publishing environment, all authors, whether published traditionally or independently, must undertake the marketing and promotion of their book. This includes social networking, blogging, having a website etc. It may also include virtual book tours or blog tours, book signings, book award programs. There are numerous companies today offering a range of promotional services for every budget with varying programs for different genres etc.

While bookstores remain the primary domain of traditional publishers, online retailers such as Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords etc, cater to the self-published author making it easy to upload books, to have them printed on demand, and distributed globally.

Given the ongoing demise of bricks-and-mortar bookstores with the closure of major chains like Borders, Angus & Robertson, Hughes & Hughes and others, it is predicted that within three years, 75% of books will be sold online (50% as ebooks and 25% as printed books). Only 25% of books will be sold in physical bookstores (down from 75% today).

Advantages of self-publishing

• Time to market: author's book can be ready for the market in a matter of weeks compared to years with the traditional publishing process. Before an author can approach a publishing house they will need an agent, and this process alone can take months or years. Publishers will then take a further 18-24 months before the title is available.
• Opportunities not missed: If an author has written something that is currently popular, it will still be popular in a matter of weeks (the time it takes to self-publish) but may not be so in a couple of years (when it would reach the bookshelves). This may partially explain why 70-80% of traditionally-published authors fail to earn out their advance.
• Control: the author makes all the decisions regarding the content and design of their book. When an author signs with a publisher, the publisher is in control and is free to make any changes. This may result in elements of the story being changed in a way that is not desirable to the author, and in extreme circumstances, a publisher might make decisions that cause controversy and distress for an author, in particular decisions on the cover.
• Rights: the author retains all rights including foreign-language rights, e-book rights, movie rights, television rights etc.
• Income: authors earn higher royalties per book — 30-70% of the retail price compared to 5-25% for traditionally published authors who will also have to pay an agent 10-20% commission on all sales.
• Payment: publishers tally royalties once or twice a year, whereas authors will receive a monthly cheque for sales made from Amazon.com, The Kindle Store, B&Nm Smashwords etc. The author will also receive weekly sales reports from Amazon.com.
• No Backlist: A publisher can backlist an author's title if sales are inadequate, which means the author's book is no longer available for purchase. The average life span of a book printed by a traditional publisher is approximately 18 months which is not sufficient time, for a debut author particularly, to build a platform and garner a fan base. The life span of a self-published book is indefinite.
• ISBN: Authors can obtain an ISBN, which is an industry standard number that identifies each book and its various formats, easily and for minimum cost. An ISBN is not essential for an e-book, but it is desirable.
• Outsourcing: There are numerous companies today offering a range of services for self-published authors with packages to suit any budget. These packages can include editing, marketing, promotional materials, press releases, video book trailers etc.
• POD: self-published authors no longer have to order large quantities of their book and find a place to store them. Print-on-demand technology means a book will be produced whenever someone buys it, and the quality of the end product is equal to that of a publishing house.

Disadvantages of self-publishing

• Cost of creation: The author is responsible for the cost of creating their book. This can be expensive when outsourcing aspects of it including editing and design, or when purchasing a publishing package. The cost of creating an ebook however is minimal at best, and zero if the author creates their own cover.
• Cost of printing: When an author lists their title with online retailers, the retailer will print a book as and when a reader buys it. This means printing one book at a time, which is more costly than printing thousands of copies at once as a publishing house would do. For example, a 250-page novel would cost approximately US$3.85 per book to print and this is deducted from the retail price along with other production costs to leave the author with their net profit per book. The advantage is that the author controls the price and their profit margin. Care must be taken not to over price a book compared to other titles in the market.
• Physical bookstores: not generally accessible for independent authors, and authors need to offer industry standard terms and conditions, for example, the ability to return unsold books at the author's expense, discount on the Recommended Retail Price (RRP)(approx 40%) and 90-day payment terms. A distributor will require 10-15% of the RRP. It is therefore significantly more viable to sell books in the online market.
• Marketing/Promotion: The author is responsible for marketing and promoting their book, however this now works both ways—authors published via a publishing house are also expected to promote themselves and their books with blogging and social networking, and very few traditionally published authors receive marketing financial support from their publisher.
• Author advance: This used to be a major negative, but is much less so now with advances to debut authors likely to be US$1,000 to $5,000, and it is only an advance on future sales.

Self-published best-sellers

Self-published works that find large audiences are extremely rare, and are usually the result of self-promotion. However, many works now considered classic were originally self-published, including the original writings of William Blake

William Blake

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...

, Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf

Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....

, Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman

Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...

, William Morris

William Morris

William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...

, and James Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

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Title	Author	Notes
What Color is Your Parachute? What Color is Your Parachute? What Color is Your Parachute? by Richard Nelson Bolles is a book for job-seekers that has been revised every year since 1970. Bolles initially self-published the book , but it has now been commercially published since November 1972, by Ten Speed Press, in Berkeley, California. Since 1975 it has...	Bolles, Richard Nelson Richard Nelson Bolles Richard Nelson Bolles is a former Episcopal clergyman, and the author of the best-selling job-hunting book, What Color is Your Parachute?-Early life and career:...
Chicken Soup for the Soul Chicken Soup for the Soul Chicken Soup for the Soul is a series of books, usually featuring a collection of short and dense inspirational stories and motivational essays. The 101 stories in the first book of the series were compiled by motivational speakers Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen.There have been over 200 titles...	Canfield, Jack	and Hansen, Mark Victor
Golden Handcuffs	Courtney, Polly Polly Courtney Polly Courtney is an English author and media commentator. She is best known as the author of the novels Golden Handcuffs and Poles Apart.-Background:...
The Christmas Box The Christmas Box The Christmas Box is an American novel written by Richard Paul Evans and self-published in 1993. A Christmas story purportedly written for his children, the book was advertised locally by Evans, who was working at the time as an advertising executive. He placed the book in Utah stores and it...	Evans, Richard Paul Richard Paul Evans Richard Paul Evans is an American author.-Biography:Evans graduated from Cottonwood High School in Salt Lake City. He graduated with a B.A. degree from the University of Utah in 1984. While working as an advertising executive he wrote a Christmas story for his children...
Spartacus	Fast, Howard Howard Fast Howard Melvin Fast was an American novelist and television writer. Fast also wrote under the pen names E. V. Cunningham and Walter Ericson.-Early life:Fast was born in New York City...	During the McCarthy era when he was rejected by previous large scale publishers
Invisible Life	Harris, E. Lynn E. Lynn Harris Everette "E." Lynn Harris was an American author. Openly gay, he was best known for his depictions of African American men who were on the down-low and closeted...
Eragon Eragon Eragon is the first book in the Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini, who began writing at the age of 15. After writing the first draft for a year, he spent a second year rewriting it and fleshing out the story and characters. Paolini's parents saw the final manuscript and decided to...	Paolini, Christopher Christopher Paolini Christopher Paolini is an American author. He is best known as the author of the Inheritance Cycle, which consists of the books Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr, and Inheritance...	(The book was later published by Knopf)
In Search of Excellence In Search of Excellence In Search of Excellence is an international bestselling book written by Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr.. First published in 1982, it is one of the biggest selling and most widely read business books ever, selling 3 million copies in its first four years, and being the most widely held...	Peters, Tom Tom Peters Thomas J. "Tom" Peters is an American writer on business management practices, best-known for In Search of Excellence .-Life and career:Peters was born in Baltimore, Maryland...
Elfquest Elfquest Elfquest is a cult hit comic book property created by Wendy and Richard Pini in 1978. It is a fantasy story about a community of elves and other fictional species who struggle to survive and coexist on a primitive Earth-like planet with two moons. Several published volumes of prose fiction also...	Pini, Wendy and Richard Wendy and Richard Pini Wendy Pini née Fletcher, and Richard Pini are the husband-and-wife team responsible for creating the well-known Elfquest series of comics, graphic novels and prose works...
The Celestine Prophecy The Celestine Prophecy The Celestine Prophecy is a 1993 novel by James Redfield that discusses various psychological and spiritual ideas which are rooted in many ancient Eastern Traditions and New Age spirituality. The main character of the novel undertakes a journey to find and understand a series of nine spiritual...	Redfield, James James Redfield James Redfield is an American author, lecturer, screenwriter and film producer. He is notable for his novel The Celestine Prophecy .-Biography:...
Contest Contest (novel) Contest is the self-published first novel by Australian thriller writer Matthew Reilly. In 1996, after being rejected by several Australian publishing houses, Reilly personally paid for 1000 copies of the book to be published privately under the label of 'Karanadon Entertainment', and sold them...	Reilly, Matthew Matthew Reilly Matthew John Reilly is an Australian action thriller writer. His novels are noted for their fast pace, twisting plots and intense action.- Biography :...
The Joy of Cooking The Joy of Cooking Joy of Cooking, often known as "The Joy of Cooking" is one of the United States' most-published cookbooks, and has been in print continuously since 1936 and with more than 18 million copies sold. It was privately published in 1931 by Irma S. Rombauer, a homemaker in St. Louis, Missouri, who was...	Rombauer, Irma S.
No Time for Work	Ryan, George
A Choice, Not An Echo	Schlafly, Phyllis Phyllis Schlafly Phyllis McAlpin Stewart Schlafly is a Constitutional lawyer and an American politically conservative activist and author who founded the Eagle Forum. She is known for her opposition to modern feminism ideas and for her campaign against the proposed Equal Rights Amendment...
Shadowmancer Shadowmancer Shadowmancer is a fantasy novel by Graham Taylor , first published privately in 2002. It is a Christian allegory in the form of a fantasy adventure, akin to C. S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia. Taylor wrote the book to counteract what he saw as a rise in atheist propaganda in children's books...	Taylor, G. P.	Later published by Faber & Faber
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information	Tufte, Edward Edward Tufte Edward Rolf Tufte is an American statistician and professor emeritus of political science, statistics, and computer science at Yale University. He is noted for his writings on information design and as a pioneer in the field of data visualization....
Poems in Prose Poems in Prose Poems in Prose is an illustrated collection of prose poems by Clark Ashton Smith. It was released in 1965 and was published by Arkham House in an edition of 1,016 copies. The book is a nearly complete collection of Smith's prose poetry.-Contents:...	Wilde, Oscar Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...

Other well-known self-publishers include: Stephen Crane

Stephen Crane

Stephen Crane was an American novelist, short story writer, poet and journalist. Prolific throughout his short life, he wrote notable works in the Realist tradition as well as early examples of American Naturalism and Impressionism...

, E. E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings

Edward Estlin Cummings , popularly known as E. E. Cummings, with the abbreviated form of his name often written by others in lowercase letters as e.e. cummings , was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright...

, Deepak Chopra

Deepak Chopra

Deepak Chopra is an Indian medical doctor, public speaker, and writer on subjects such as spirituality, Ayurveda and mind-body medicine. Chopra began his career as an endocrinologist and later shifted his focus to alternative medicine. Chopra now runs his own medical center, with a focus on...

, Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin

Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...

, Zane Grey

Zane Grey

Zane Grey was an American author best known for his popular adventure novels and stories that presented an idealized image of the Old West. Riders of the Purple Sage was his bestselling book. In addition to the success of his printed works, they later had second lives and continuing influence...

, Pat Ingoldsby

Pat Ingoldsby

Pat Ingoldsby is an Irish poet. He has hosted children's TV shows, written plays for the stage and for radio, published books of short stories, and been a newspaper columnist...

, Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...

, D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence

David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...

, Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine

Thomas "Tom" Paine was an English author, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States...

, Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

, Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...

, Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and another for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat."-Biography:Sandburg was born in Galesburg,...

, George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

, Upton Sinclair

Upton Sinclair

Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. , was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle . It exposed conditions in the U.S...

, Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...

, Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...

, Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman

Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...

 and Mark Twain

Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...

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Self-publishing in music and in other media

Musical performers often self-publish, or "self-release" their recordings without having access to record label

Record label

In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...

 resources. While some acts who enjoy local or small scale popularity have started their own labels in order to release their music through stores, others simply sell the music directly to customers, for example, making it available to those at their live concerts. In the years since the Internet became prominent as a medium for publicizing and distributing music, many musical acts have sold their recordings directly over the Internet without a label, either through their own websites or from third party websites. In some cases the sale takes the form of a physical CD or LP that is shipped to customers, while more sales today are beginning to take the form of downloads. Several musicians who first found prominence recording for record labels have recently attracted wide attention for self-releasing records online, among them Radiohead

Radiohead

Radiohead are an English rock band from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, formed in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke , Jonny Greenwood , Ed O'Brien , Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway .Radiohead released their debut single "Creep" in 1992...

, Nine Inch Nails

Nine Inch Nails

Nine Inch Nails is an American industrial rock project, founded in 1988 by Trent Reznor in Cleveland, Ohio. As its main producer, singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist, Reznor is the only official member of Nine Inch Nails and remains solely responsible for its direction...

 and Brian Eno

Brian Eno

Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...

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