Hi all
Apologies for the interruption – but I can now report that the transition is now complete.
It was a somewhat harrowing undertaking – this is a WordPress site.
Not that that is particularly meaningful to any of you, probably.
But, it is meaningful, structurally. But, that’s my problem – not yours.
And so – going to try to carry on with some more interesteing statistics – today the focus is
on self-publishing.
A once rather reviled publishing format, it has, it seems, recently gained – respect.
Notwithstanding that it still carries the blemish of ‘vanity press’- in that literally,
anyone – can publish, anything.
Traditional publishers generally accept an author’s work and enter into an agreement to publish,
based in part on generally a long-standing history between the publisher and an agent.
And to reach that hallowed spot, it is every (well, most…) writer’s dreams to get lucky,
get an agent – be represented appropriately – and, be published.
It is almost always a very long road – you can look for yourselves elsewhere on this site –
I created a whole section of the actual rejection letter received by some very famous authors.
JK Rowling, we are all familiar with – but she’s a great ‘today’ example.
Following are some startling statistics:
Self-Publishing Statistics 2026: Market Growth, Trends & Author Success Rates
Updated: July 31, 2026
The most reliable number in self-publishing is title output, and it moved a long way last year.
US publishers registered 4,172,222 ISBNs in 2025, up 32.5% on 2024. Of those, more than
3.5 million were self-published and 642,242 came from traditional publishers
Most of the other figures quoted about this industry are softer than they look, so this page keeps them apart.
Counts and survey results come first, each with its source and the date it was checked.
The market size projections come last, along with an honest note about where those numbers actually originate.
Self-Publishing Market Size and Growth
Start with the caveat, because it changes how you should read every dollar figure on this topic.
The self-publishing market is routinely described as worth around $1.85 billion in 2024, growing at 16.7% a year,
reaching roughly $6 billion by 2033. Those three numbers appear together on dozens of sites,
including, until this revision, on this one.
They come from commercial market research reports whose methodology is not published.
Nobody outside those firms can check how the market was defined, what was counted as self-publishing revenue,
or how the growth rate was derived. We could not verify them, so we are no longer presenting them as fact.
What can be verified is how many books get registered, which is counted rather than modelled,
and what authors report earning, which comes from named surveys with published sample sizes.
Self-Publishing Market Growth Projections
| Year | Self-published US titles | Change |
| 2024 | 2.5 million | baseline |
| 2025 | More than 3.5 million | +38.7% |
| 2025 (all US titles) | 4,172,222 | +32.5% |
| 2025 (traditional only) | 642,242 | more than double 2005 |
US ISBN registrations.
Source: Publishers Weekly on Bowker data, checked 30 July 2026.
Note what this table does not contain: a 2030 or 2033 projection. We do not have a sourceable one,
and inventing a trend line is how the unverifiable dollar figures above got into circulation in the first place.
Self-Published Book Output Exploding
Self-published titles outnumbered traditionally published ones in the US by roughly five and a half to one in 2025.
That ratio is worth stating carefully, because inflated versions of it circulate widely. It is not fifty to one, and it never was.
The growth rate is the more striking figure. Self-published registrations went from 2.5 million in 2024 to more than
3.5 million in 2025, a 38.7% jump in a single year. Traditional output grew too, roughly doubling since 2005 to 642,242 titles,
but at nothing like that pace.
An ISBN registration is not a sale, a reader, or a dollar. It records that a title exists. A large share of those 3.5 million
titles will sell in single digits, and the count says nothing about which ones.
Self-Published vs Traditional Publishing Output
| Publishing type | US titles registered, 2025 | Share of total |
| Self-published | More than 3,500,000 | about 84% |
| Traditional publishers | 642,242 | about 15% |
| All US ISBN registrations | 4,172,222 | 100% |
Shares are calculated from the registration counts above and do not represent sales or revenue.
Source: Publishers Weekly on Bowker data, checked 30 July 2026.
The comparison against traditional publishers is often framed as a competition. In practice the two systems
now measure different things. One counts books that passed a commercial filter. The other counts books that were finished.
Key Self-Publishing Platforms in 2026Amazon remains the centre of gravity and is slowly losing share of it.
In the Written Word Media 2025 Indie Author Survey,which collected 1,346 responses, 83% of authors named
Amazon as their top revenue source. That figure was 91% in 2023 and 87% in 2024.
Three consecutive readings moving in the same direction is the most interesting platform statistic available,
and it is a slow trend rather than a collapse. In the same survey, second place for revenue was spread
across in-person sales, Apple, Kobo and direct sales, which is where the lost share is going.
In the next issue we will dig deeper with tables and statistics such as:
Self-Publishing Platform Comparison
Author Earnings and Income Reality
Self-Published Author Income Distribution
Technology Driving Self-Publishing Forward
Technology Adoption in Self-Publishing
Author Demographics and Preferences
Why Authors Choose Self-Publishing
Direct-to-Reader Sales Revolution
Direct Sales vs Platform Sales Comparison
Self-Publishing vs Traditional Publishing
Self-Publishing vs Traditional Publishing Breakdown
Future Trends and Predictions
