State of Self-Publishing 2026
An original benchmark report drawn from 3,687 self-published books and 5,340 indie authors served by HMD Publishing as of 21 April 2026. All numbers below come directly from HMD's production database — no industry-survey extrapolation, no third-party averages.
Published 21 April 2026 · By the HMD Editorial Team · Data licensed under CC BY 4.0 — quote freely with a link back.
The headline numbers
What HMD Publishing's catalogue actually looks like, measured live from the production database.
Avg page count drawn from a sample of 16 books with metadata captured.
What indie authors actually publish
Genre mix across HMD's 3,687-book catalogue. Non-fiction (especially business and self-help) dominates — note how far behind fiction sits compared to the indie-fiction narrative most blogs spin.
| Genre | Books | Share of catalogue |
|---|---|---|
| Non Fiction | 144 | 20.1% |
| Business | 59 | 8.2% |
| Self Help | 44 | 6.1% |
| Fiction | 40 | 5.6% |
| Children | 26 | 3.6% |
| Christian | 19 | 2.6% |
| Non Fiction A | 17 | 2.4% |
| Formatting | 15 | 2.1% |
| Journal | 14 | 2% |
| Children Book | 13 | 1.8% |
Which services indie authors actually buy
Distribution of paid services across HMD authors (excluding cancelled work). Formatting is the most common entry point — most authors come for cover or formatting first and add downstream services later.
| Service | Authors | Share of base |
|---|---|---|
| Book Formatting | 834 | 15.6% |
| Book Editing | 9 | 0.2% |
| Book Publishing | 6 | 0.1% |
| Amazon Ads | 6 | 0.1% |
| Book Cover Design | 4 | 0.1% |
| Illustrations | 1 | 0% |
How long publishing actually takes
Median delivery time for the Book Publishing service across recent projects with both a start and delivery date on file.
Sample size for delivery timing: 52 completed Book Publishing projects.
Methodology
How these numbers were produced — so you can decide what to trust.
- Source: HMD Publishing's production Postgres database (Supabase). Specifically the
client_books,clients, andclient_servicestables. - Cut date: 21 April 2026. Numbers are recomputed each time the report is regenerated.
- Genres:Title-cased and de-duplicated. We exclude internal placeholder labels (sequence tags like “Book 2”, “Specialised Category”, “Promotion”) that are data-entry artefacts, not reader-facing genres.
- Service mix: Cancelled service rows are excluded. Each author is counted once per service, even if they purchased multiple instances.
- Publishing timeline: Median computed across rows of
client_serviceswithservice_type = ‘Book Publishing’and both start + delivery dates populated. Outliers above 365 days are clipped. - What’s missing:We deliberately don’t publish bestseller-rate or geographic-share figures because the underlying fields aren’t reliably populated yet. We’d rather show fewer numbers we can defend than more we can’t.
Cite this report
Permanent URL: https://hmdpublishing.com/research/state-of-self-publishing-2026
Suggested citation:
HMD Publishing. (2026). HMD State of Self-Publishing 2026. Retrieved from https://hmdpublishing.com/research/state-of-self-publishing-2026
Licensed under CC BY 4.0. Quote any number freely as long as you link back.