How do you decide whether to self publish or get an agent?

[safetyzone]

I've started writing for fun and I'm currently 24k words in my manuscript. I have a day job so it's not like I'm trying to live on it, so originally I was thinking of self publishing on Kindle. But then so many of you are talking about submitting to agents, so I want to know how you decide which way to go? Personally I'm terrified of that process as I hate rejection, and I just want to have a completed book out in the wild, but it will be better if I can get audience for it!

Let me explain again that I'm not talking about people who write a rubbish book, put it on Amazon and then go away. That book won't sell beyond friends and family. I'm talking about serious self-publishers who write books people want to read (they research that), have the books edited, spend time and money on getting the right cover, become good at formatting, and put a lot of work into marketing (including spending money on ads). I've seen loads of examples of very successful self-published authors. Would you like me to list some?

If you're an average traditionally-published author you won't be making much from your books.

I'm comparing average and average. You're comparing average trade published authors with the extreme outliers in self-publishing. Most of the ones investing their own money in covers and editing still sell in the double figures.

Again, where are you getting that information from - sounds as though you're just plucking it out of thin air?
In self-publishing, you're unlikely to make significant money without working very hard, including on marketing. But if you do that, you can make useful money, and may well make more than if you're traditionally published. Even consistently published and respected traditionally-published writers rarely make enough from their books to live on.

Having said that, I think that traditional publishing has advantages for writers of literary fiction, which is what a lot of people on Mumsnet seem to be, so I wouldn't try to put them off.

I could list lots of successful independently-published writers. I know of a children's writer from the UK whose most popular book has almost 20,000 reviews on Amazon, and that's just the English version.

14 was the average number of SP copies sold a couple of years ago when I last looked. The example of 5k sales was my least successful Big 5 book. I made four figures from it.

I'll leave it there. Sorry for this discussion taking over your thread OP. Good luck with whichever path you take!

You don't explain your source. And it's really irrelevant how few copies someone sells if they don't take a) have a decent, edited book, b) pay for a good cover, c) market it competently. A large number of self-published authors don't manage all that. Those who do can do well. The way you speak about self-publishing makes it clear that you know very little about it, and seems to be calculated to make people who read your posts think that they would inevitably fail. Here are some figures from Books.by based on some reasonable sources:

"Here's the reality of self-publishing income, based on aggregated 2024–2025 survey data:
Annual Income% of AuthorsDescription
$0
10–15%
Published but haven't sold any copies yet
$1–$999
35–40%
Hobby income, minimal marketing
$1,000–$9,999
20–25%
Side income, building a catalogue
$10,000–$49,999
10–15%
Significant supplemental income
$50,000–$99,999
3–5%
Full-time income potential
$100,000+
1–2%
Successful full-time business

So 5 or 6 percent are making a good annual income. Then roughly another 5 to 10 percent are making an annual income that is enough to live on.

I’m self published (professionally edited, professional covers) and have earned 5 figures

I think we’re talking about two very different things. I write serious literary fiction. Each novel takes a long time. I absolutely admire the work ethic, business sense and canniness of people who churn out commercial fiction for self-publication and have construed that into finding and maintaining a committed readership and a career, but it’s not something I read or want to write myself. It’s a whole different type of writing and a whole different way of envisaging what a career looks like.

You're right. But there is some overlap between the 2. I know of people who are self-publishing book-club type fiction. And not everyone who self publishes "churns out" half a dozen books a year. It's difficult to get traditionally published if you write niche books, so there are people who are self-publishing high quality one-off type books which would otherwise go unpublished. Traditional publishers are actually very concerned with finding the next commercial hit - they're not necessarily focused on quality. And they often give preference to authors who are celebrities for other reasons, even if they don't write that well.

I didn't in the least intend to denigrate the work by saying 'churn out', though the rate of production is certainly much faster for many of those who make a living self-publishing fiction than those who publish literary fiction via trad publishers, especially those working in genre fiction series. I know someone who works at Enid Blyton rates -- an 80k book written in a week or so, and edited in another ten days or two weeks. She averages a novel every month or six weeks, and alternates fairly strictly between her various series.

Absolutely trad publishers need commercial hits too, but some editors/imprints at least are also looking to publish work they think is important, or think of the celebrity fiction as allowing them to publish the things that sell less well.