How Much Does It Cost to Self-Publish a Book?
Writing a book can cost anywhere from $0 to $10,000+ depending on how much of the work you want to outsource and what your budget will allow. That said, you can absolutely write a high-quality book with a very small budget; it just may take a little more elbow grease, but you can do it.
In this article, we’ll explore the costs, where you can use free options, and what premium options are.
What Costs Are Essential?
There are a few costs that should be considered essential, but as mentioned, there are ethical ways to get around paying for them.
The main essential cost if you want to distribute your book widely is an ISBN. You can purchase these numbers at Bowker (https://www.myidentifiers.com/), and they let you sell your book at all retailers. If you’re not familiar with an ISBN, it’s the little number you see on a book’s barcode. The free way to get around this is that if you publish through KDP, they will give you an ISBN, but it will only work on Amazon platforms. So, if you plan to only sell through Amazon, it’s not that big of a deal, but if you want your book to be available elsewhere later on, things can get tricky.
The other two essential costs depend on your skill set and your budget. These are editors and cover artists. As much as we don’t like to admit it, we all judge books by their covers, which is why having a cover artist is so important! And then, with an editor, once someone cracks open your book, nothing takes away from a story like typos, formatting errors, and issues with the story. So, if you think you’ll need help in those areas, consider editors and cover artists as essential costs.
Editing Costs
Editing costs can vary greatly, depending on the experience and backlog of the editor, the type of editing you want them to do, and your timeline. There are three primary types of editors:
Developmental Editor: This editor helps you develop your story, tighten up slow parts, weave storylines together, and, overall, help you develop your book.
General Editor: This editor is a middle ground. They can be both a developmental editor and a line editor, but they usually don’t take on a project until after at least a first draft is done.
Line Editor: This type of editor is like a proofreader. They’re your last line of defense before the book goes live, catching any little typos and formatting issues.
[Need help with story structure? Try “Save the Cat”]
All three of these editors have different pay ranges, with developmental editors typically being the cheapest. You can find a list of professionally vetted editors at Reedsy, but they can tend to be pricey. If they’re out of your budget, look around on TikTok and Fiverr. There are many, MANY qualified editors on there.
Cover and Formatting Costs
Much like with the editing costs, cover and formatting costs have a wide range. Personally, I’ve been working with the same cover artist for years, and she charges $130 for an illustrated ebook and paperback cover. I found her on Fiverr. Others go to Reedsy, where cover artists can charge upward of $500. Or there are also websites where they sell pre-made covers for around $50 that only require you to change the text. Whichever you choose, the key is to know what kind of cover you want before you hire someone. Research your genre and think of ideas for what you want before you contact an artist. It’s okay to give them some creative license, of course, but you should know what book covers in your genre look like to help attract your ideal readers. This also goes for the size of your book (not page count but the actual height and width of the book). Some genres, like Poetry, have specific sizes that readers expect.
ISBN/Distribution Costs
If you budget for one thing, make it your ISBN. This will allow you to broadly distribute your book wherever you want and to potentially get into physical bookstores as well. You can buy one for $125, but if you plan on publishing an ebook and a physical book, you’ll need two, so it might make more sense to order them in bulk. The next option is 10 ISBNs for $295, then 100 for $575, and finally, 1,000 for $1,500.
As for distribution costs, if you choose to go with a print-on-demand (POD) company like Amazon KDP or IngramSpark, then there are no distribution costs. They fulfill the orders as they come in. If you choose to buy your own books in bulk and then fulfill orders yourself, all of the upfront costs fall on you and are determined by the printing company you choose and how you handle shipping costs. Remember: if you’re only sending a book, you can send it as Media Mail at the post office.
Marketing Costs
Marketing costs are the part that can really run up a budget. You can buy BookBub ads (simple placement or featured), Kindle ads, Facebook ads, Google ads… ads, ads, ads until your heart’s content. You can spend a ton of money on a website for your book, too. But truthfully, you’ll likely do just as well by building an email list and a social media presence for yourself. There are a lot of books out there, so the thing that will set yours apart and make people want to buy it is you. Show up in both your online and analog life and tell people what made you want to write the book, what it’s about, behind-the-scenes details, etc. YOU are your best marketing.
Three Sample Budgets
Here are three sample budgets for self-publishing your book. Note: I’ve left out ISBNs in the first two because you can still publish without them. If you only buy one ISBN for $125, then that means you can only publish an ebook, physical book, or audiobook with it. In that case, it might be more financially prudent to use a free ISBN and save up to buy them in bulk, then re-release your book. But the choice is completely up to you and your budget!
Self-publishing on a $0 Budget
Here’s how you can write and publish a book with $0. Start by writing your book in Google Docs or LibreOffice if you prefer to write in a non-cloud environment. Edit it by using spell check and the free version of Grammarly, or a similar program that checks your grammar. Spell check alone won’t catch everything, so always use a second program to help. Then, find some beta readers to read your second draft (always edit before showing your draft to people!) and use that feedback for further story development. You shouldn’t have to pay for beta readers. You can ask friends and family who are readers, or offer to swap drafts with an author friend. When in doubt, put a video on social media. You never know who might want to help! While they’re reading, you’ll design your cover using the Amazon cover generator or build one yourself on Canva. After you make the edits from the beta readers, solicit ARC readers (this should also be free) and send the final draft out to them once it’s done. Finally, upload your book on Amazon KDP and use one of their free ISBNs. Once you make enough money from your book or if your budget increases, you can buy an ISBN later and re-release a new edition of your book with it.
Self-publishing on a $100 Budget
Here’s how you can publish a book on a $100 budget. Follow all of the steps from the $0 budget above, and save your entire budget for one thing: cover art. It’s true that people judge a book by its cover, and there’s a big backlash against authors who use AI to make their cover art, with many people equating an AI cover with an AI-written book, even if that’s not true. So, use your $100 to hire a cover artist. This budget might only get you an ebook cover, but that’s okay. Once your budget increases, you can go back to the designer later. Since you’re using Amazon KDP’s free ISBN with this budget, you’ll only be publishing an ebook to start anyway. But just know that you can also use the cover for the front, and then a plain color or something simple for the spine and back cover. You can build this in Canva.
$1,000+ Budget
With a $1,000+ budget, you can afford to get as much help as you want on your book, including outsourcing the formatting work to a company that works with independent authors. You can find editors, PR people, and cover artists on sites like Reedsy, or you can also hire them on sites like Fiverr. For this budget, make a list of the tasks you need to complete, and then decide which you want to do yourself and which you’d like some help with.
Key Takeaways
You can publish a book on any budget, including $0. You may have to do more work, more revisions, and learn some new skills (like making a book cover), but you can do it.
Some costs, like ISBNs, are absolutely worth the price because it means you can have wider distribution of your book. Even if you’re publishing on Kindle Unlimited, it still makes sense in the long run for you to have that ISBN to give you flexibility.
Always remember, you can re-release your book later when you have more money for a better cover artist, etc. But a small budget shouldn’t keep you from your dream of publishing your book.
