Your manuscript is finished. One decision now shapes everything that follows: whether you find an agent and a publisher, or take the book to market yourself. Neither route is the correct one, and plenty of authors have done both — sometimes with the same book. What matters is matching the route to your book, your budget, and your appetite for the work that comes after the writing.

Here is how the two compare on the things that genuinely affect your decisions: cost, time, money and rights.

What each route actually means

Traditional publishing means finding an agent, who sells the book to a publisher. Most UK trade publishers will not look at unagented submissions, so the agent is the gate. The publisher pays an advance against royalties, then handles editing, design, printing, distribution and sales into bookshops. It carries the commercial risk and, in return, acquires the publishing rights it has negotiated.

Self-publishing means you are the publisher. You commission the editing, cover and interior design, buy your own ISBN, arrange printing — usually print on demand — set the price, and handle distribution and marketing. You keep the rights and the control, and you carry the cost and the risk.

Costs: who pays, and for what

With traditional publishing, nothing comes out of your pocket. Money flows towards you, not away. That is not the same as free, though: advances for debut authors are usually modest, and the publisher's investment is reflected in the share of revenue it keeps.

Self-publishing costs are real, and mostly unavoidable if you want a book that can stand alongside trade-published titles. The usual line items:

• Developmental editing or structural feedback — often the most valuable money you will spend
• Copy-editing and proofreading, which are two separate jobs
• Cover design, including spine and back for a print edition
• Typesetting, if you are publishing in print as well as ebook
• ISBNs, which in the UK come from Nielsen; buy your own rather than relying on a platform-assigned number if you want to be recognised as the publisher and sell widely
• Printing, or the per-copy cost deducted by a print-on-demand service
• Marketing: a simple website, review copies, advertising, launch events

You can spend a few hundred pounds doing much of it yourself, or several thousand commissioning everything. Budget before you begin, and treat editing as the last thing to cut. If you publish in print in the UK, note that legal deposit applies: copies must be offered to the British Library and, on request, to the other legal deposit libraries.

Timelines: patience against speed

Traditional publishing is slow. Finding an agent can take months, and the submission round to publishers can take as long again. Once a deal is signed, publication is typically a year or more away, because the publisher works to its own schedule and the retail calendar.

Self-publishing puts you in charge of the clock. A realistic timeline from finished manuscript to on sale is three to six months if you are commissioning editing and design — quicker if the manuscript is already clean, longer if it needs structural work. The trap is rushing. A book published in six weeks with a homemade cover and unchecked typos costs more in reputation than it saves in time.

Royalties and advances

Traditional deals pay an advance against royalties. Royalties on print editions are commonly in the region of 7.5–10% of the retail price, with higher rates on some hardbacks and lower ones on heavily discounted sales. Ebook royalties are usually a percentage of net receipts, often around a quarter. The catch is that royalties are only paid once the advance has earned out, and plenty of books never reach that point.

Self-publishing pays no advance but a far larger share of each sale. On print on demand you receive the list price minus printing and the platform's cut. On ebooks, platforms typically pay 35% or 70% of the list price depending on the price you set and the terms in force — these terms change, so check the current figures before you plan. Selling 300 copies direct to readers at a sensible price can put more in your pocket than selling 3,000 through a trade publisher.

The arithmetic cuts both ways. Traditional publishing wins on reach and volume; self-publishing wins on rate. Neither wins by default.

Rights and control

In a traditional deal you grant publishing rights, often for the world and often including subsidiary rights such as translation, audio and book club editions. Agents exist partly to hold that line, and some terms are negotiable. You will usually be consulted on the cover, the title, the price and the publication date, but the final say sits with the publisher.

Self-publishing leaves every right with you. That means you can license them yourself — audio separately, translation separately — or take a trade deal later for a different book. It also means nobody else is out there selling those rights on your behalf.

If you are offered a contract

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