Publishing has a wonderful vocabulary for making financial disappointment sound distinguished. Recognition. Validation. The right home for your work. All lovely things, although the electricity company remains stubbornly reluctant to accept validation by direct debit.

That is why the latest ALLi income report deserves attention. It gives independent authors something more useful than another argument about whether self-publishing counts: evidence that serious income can be earned outside the traditional route.

The number worth talking about

The Alliance of Independent Authors’ 2025 report puts median gross income at $13,500 among its qualifying respondents. It received more than 1,800 responses worldwide, of which 1,520 qualified. The median was $12,749 in its 2023 survey: roughly 6% growth between surveys.

This is a 2025 report, not a newly released 2026 survey. And there is a small but consequential wrinkle: ALLi’s current summary page describes 6% as annual growth, whereas the report’s table labels it growth since the 2023 survey. Its separate year-to-year median comparison is $10,001 to $13,500, or 35%. For clarity, the between-survey comparison here follows the report.

Gross income also needs its proper name. It is not the money left after an author has paid for editing, covers, advertising and the assorted services that make a book look as though somebody meant to publish it.

Has indie publishing beaten traditional publishing?

ALLi’s facts page contrasts its $13,500 figure with a typical traditionally published author earning $6,000–$8,000. That is an eye-catching comparison. It is also a comparison between survey populations, rather than an experiment in which identical authors took different routes with identical books.

Who answers a survey matters. So do their country, genre, working hours, experience, backlist and what the questionnaire counts as income. A novelist with fifteen books and an established readership is not a useful financial forecast for someone uploading a first novel this weekend.

The Authors Guild’s 2023 survey of 2022 earnings offers another useful reference point: full-time self-published authors reported median book income of $12,800. Those publishing since at least 2018 reported $24,000. That supports taking independent publishing seriously as a business. It does not establish that every indie author earns more than every traditionally published author.

Nor do these figures mean authors are out-earning publishing companies. Author income and a publisher’s corporate revenue are different measurements. Putting them on the same podium would be like awarding a marathon medal to a bus.

The business opportunity is real. So is the work.

The worthwhile conclusion is that a traditional contract should earn its place in an author’s business plan. Prestige may have personal value. It should not be allowed to do all the arithmetic.

An independent author can make decisions about the edition, price, release plan and marketing. Those decisions are also work. Control becomes commercially useful when there is a reader to reach, a product worth buying and a way of delivering it at a sustainable cost.

There is no need to pretend the road is effortless. In Written Word Media’s separate 2025 survey, 44% of respondents reported $100 or less in monthly author income. The organisation itself cautions that its audience is self-selected and its results are self-reported. Different samples can tell different parts of the story.

Make the comparison personal

Before choosing a route, put an actual offer beside an actual self-publishing budget. Compare the rights involved, money received, costs you would bear, help you would get and work you would still need to do. Include your time. An author business that survives only because its owner works free has discovered a rather unoriginal financing arrangement.

If pricing is part of that calculation, our look at Amazon’s ebook royalty ceiling is a useful companion. The percentage on a sales page and the profit in your account deserve separate attention.

The income evidence gives independent authors a strong reason to stop treating a traditional deal as the automatic promotion. It also gives them a reason to keep proper accounts. Being your own publisher is a serious proposition. You are allowed to expect it to behave like a business.

Sources checked 8 September 2026. Survey years and populations are identified above; figures are not a forecast of an individual author’s earnings.