Why so many authors stop waiting for a publisher
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R. S. Breed Founder
Self-publishing used to be the thing you did once the rejections ran out. For a lot of authors now it's the first choice, and when you ask them why, the reasons are mostly unglamorous.
The first is the waiting. The traditional route is slow at every step. Querying agents can take months. If an agent takes you on, they still have to sell the book, and once it sells, a year or two before it reaches a shelf is normal. Plenty of writers set that against how many books they want to write in their lifetime and decide they'd rather be publishing.
The second is the silence. "No response means no" is standard practice with a lot of agents. You send out something you've spent years on and hear nothing at all, not even a form letter. After enough of that, people get tired of writing into a void.
The third is control. A publishing deal usually means handing over the final say on the cover, often the title, the price and the release date. Some authors are glad to hand those over. Others find they mind more than they expected, especially when a series is dropped after book two and there's nothing they can do about it.
Underneath all of that is a change in how the choice is seen. Self-publishing isn't a consolation prize for the books nobody wanted. Plenty of authors who could chase a deal decide not to, because they've looked at what they'd be trading and would rather run their own show. That's a choice, and it deserves to be treated as one.
None of this makes the traditional route wrong, and plenty of authors do both. But if you've stopped waiting, you're in good company.
If you made that call, what was the moment it tipped?