Photo by João Silas on Unsplash

How Much Does it Really Cost to Self-Publish a Book?

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links, which pay me a small commission when readers make purchases through them.

So you’re thinking about writing your first book and wondering what it might cost to self-publish on Amazon. Well, you’re in luck; I recently did so myself. In this post, I’ll give you the ins and outs of getting your work out to the masses and break down the associated costs.

While, in time, I’ll cover more of the steps in the publishing and marketing processes, in this post, I’m going to focus on the five things I consider most important in terms of getting a high-quality, marketable product out there, without breaking the bank.

While none of the items I list in this post are 100% required, without any one of them, I think you’ll find it pretty difficult to get a product out there that people will gravitate toward, read, and share. I’ll explain why in the forthcoming sections.

Before we dive in, I just have to make a few disclaimers.

First, if you’re using this guide, I’m assuming you already have access to a computer with both a word processing program (Word, Scrivener, Google Docs, etc) and WiFi.

Second, the prices I list here are guidelines — not hard and fast rules. You may spend more or less on your own book depending on the number of pages, the amount of time you want to invest in each step, the experience of the people you work with, and so on.

Lastly, keep in mind that you certainly could spend $0 publishing your book, but if you’re looking to create something good, even great, I would highly recommend against doing so. I’ll explain why in the paragraphs below as well.

The same goes for the high end of the price spectrum. While you certainly could spend tens of thousands of dollars on your first piece, I’d recommend trying to get the most bang for your buck and investing wisely in your product.

Okay, so with those disclaimers out of the way, what are the things I recommend paying for before publishing your literary masterpiece? Here they are, in no particular order:

1. An appealing book cover
2. A professional editor
3. ISBN numbers
4. A copyright application
5. An attractive website to display your work

I’m sure you’re familiar with most of these concepts, but let’s break them down a bit further so you can become a real pro:

An Appealing Book Cover

Let’s face it, no one wants to read a book with an ugly cover. It’s a crowded marketplace; having an eye-catching cover that effectively communicates your book’s message can go a long way in terms of standing out from the crowd.

While we’ve all been told not to judge a book by its cover, it’s hard not to when we have access to millions of books at our fingertips. Saying no to the books that don’t visually appeal to us is an easy way to narrow down the field.

When I wrote my book, I reached out to an old friend who’s a graphic designer. I liked the idea of using someone in my network since I already knew the quality of his work. I’d recommend doing the same yourself if you know anyone that’s particularly skilled in design.

If you don’t, not to worry. There are plenty of websites like 99designs, Fiverr, UpWork, Freelancer.com, and Dribbble where you can find someone qualified for the job. Of course, pricing may vary based on the experience and availability of the people you talk to.

I think that somewhere in the $500-$1,000 range can get you a cover that looks great and doesn’t break the bank. If you’re strapped for cash, just be upfront with the folks you’re talking to and see if anyone is willing to design the cover in your desired price range. Someone with whom your message resonates might be willing to work for a bit cheaper as well.

The only thing I strongly recommend against here is creating the cover yourself if you’re not a graphic designer. I know it can be tempting to try to save money on your cover, but if you can spend the money on a professional, please please please do. Here’s why:

I belong to an author group on Facebook. I’ve seen some folks who aren’t designers try to create their own covers and everyone in the group can spot them from a mile away. Again, though we are told not to judge books by their covers, it’s clear that we all do, all the time.

Your cover is the first thing readers will see. If it looks cheap, readers will likely think your book isn’t very good. Do yourself a favor and invest in your book’s branding and image here — you spent all that time and effort birthing your brainchild, so don’t dull your message with a lackluster cover.

Total thus far: $500–$1,000

A Professional Editor

When I wrote the first draft of my book, I naively thought I could edit it myself in a few weeks and publish it shortly thereafter. When I went back and read that first draft, I thought it was bad. Like really really bad.

Getting your ideas out of your head and on paper, the way you want them, takes time. Writing a book is a creative endeavor, and creative works need weeks, sometimes months, to marinate and develop properly.

Even after I rewrote most of my book in the form of a second draft, I knew there was still a gap between the ideas in my head and what I’d actually written down on paper.

I figured that tapping an outside resource, someone who could provide an unbiased opinion on whether my words and ideas were fully-formed or not, would be instrumental in developing my content and preparing it for distribution.

As such, I dipped back into my network to find a professional editor — someone with experience helping writers get their best work out there. And that was exactly what I found.

My editor, as all good editors should, helped me make my message clearer. She pointed out where I was repeating myself, alienating my readers, or not getting my point across effectively. She also provided feedback on grammar, sentence structure, and flow.

Think of using an editor much like you would working with an athletic trainer; it’s hard for us to see ourselves weightlifting with the wrong form. Both our coaches and editors can identify our mistakes more easily than we can, which helps us correct them quickly.

Just like I recommend against designing your book cover yourself, I also recommend against trying to edit your book (fully) on your own. The reason why is that you may read your words differently than your reader will. Since you know what you want to say, you might read what you want to read — not necessarily what’s printed on the page.

I like to think of working with an editor in another way as well: he or she is your first “customer.” When you eventually publish your book, readers may have all sorts of criticisms of it. When you work with an editor (and later send early drafts to friends and family), you’ll hear those criticisms upfront and have an opportunity to address them before publishing, if you so choose.

You don’t want to put your work into the world only to get slammed with negative reviews or disapproval. Using an editor helps you avoid that scary scenario — your editor’s unbiased, outside perspective will push you to develop a more cohesive, thought out product.

It’s up to you how many times you want your editor to do full pass throughs of your book. I ended up having my editor review my book in-full, twice. I felt as though her first pass would require lots of changes on my end, so I made those changes, sent her another draft to get final feedback, then fixed any remaining issues on my own.

You may decide that you want to have your own editor spend more time with your manuscript than I did. That’s up to you. The cost for each pass through depends upon the length of your book, but I think it’s safe to budget somewhere between $500 and $1,000 per review for a decent editor, given a book of 150–200 pages.

To make things simple, let’s assume you want two full edits of your manuscript. That brings us to $1,000–$2,000 for editing. To find an editor, reach out to your personal networks and see if anyone can make a recommendation. If that doesn’t work, try websites like Reedsy, UpWork, or Freelancer.com.

That price range, of course, is just a guideline. The actual amount you’ll spend depends upon your situation and book specifically. Just like your cover, you owe it to yourself to get the best version of your writing out there. If you want to save money on your book, I recommend against cutting corners in either place. In the next few categories, we’ll find ways to get slightly more economical.

Total thus far: $1,500–$3,000

ISBN Numbers

An ISBN number, also known as an international standard book number, is something that identifies your book much like a URL does for a website. Each ISBN helps establish the identity of your book and distinguishes one version of it from another (for example: the paperback version from the audiobook version).

ISBN numbers are also helpful for marketing and categorization purposes: if you enter a valid ISBN into your web browser, you’ll likely see the corresponding book pop up in your search results.

Amazon’s publishing platform, KDP (formerly CreateSpace), will actually give you an ISBN for free if you want it. These ISBNs are legitimate numbers, however, there’s a potential downside to using them.

If you try to sell a book with a CreateSpace / KDP ISBN in stores, many retailers will look down on it. The logic is that said ISBNs immediately tell the retailer that the book is self-published and potentially not as professional as books created / distributed through more traditional means.

You can purchase your own ISBNs on www.myidentifiers.com. A single ISBN, as of April 2019, is $125, and a 10-pack is $295. I’d recommend going for a 10-pack so you can have a unique ISBN for all potential versions of your book (Kindle, paperback, iBook, audiobook, etc).

The cost per ISBN is much easier to stomach on the 10-pack as well. And if you publish another book in the future, you’ll likely already have paid for the ISBNs required for that book, too.

Again, it’s your call on whether you want to buy your own ISBNs or not. To make things clear-cut and help you put out a professional image, I’d recommend going for that 10-pack. That brings us to $295 for the identifiers. Not too bad.

Total thus far: $1,795–$3,295

A Copyright Application

For this one, I’m assuming you’re writing and publishing your book in the United States. I’ll be honest and say that I’m not up on my international copyright laws. If you’re writing outside of the US, feel free to skip this section or look up the copyright laws in your home country. Otherwise, continue on.

Your book is actually covered by US copyright law the minute you sit down and write it. However, there are some intricacies in regard to how that law covers you, which I will get into here.

Though I’m not a lawyer, I used the advice of law-practicing friends as well as helpful articles like this one (https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/how-to-copyright-a-book) to come to understand where the various levels of copyright protection come into play. It goes something like this:

Basic US copyright law (assuming no copyright application) protects you from others blatantly copying and/or re-distributing your work without your permission. An example of this would be a reader purchasing your book, scanning every page, and uploading your entire publication to the web for others to get a free read of your product.

Filing a copyright application (assuming the application is granted) adds another layer of protection. When you’re granted a copyright for your work, you create something called constructive notice, which basically states that your intellectual property is yours and yours exclusively, and that you could theoretically take legal action against anyone creating similar intellectual property, even if said person had no prior knowledge of your work.

Again, I’m not a lawyer, so please don’t take my word as gospel. If you’re curious, or even just a little skeptical, check out the link I included above or perform some Google searches for the subjects I talked about in this section.

Whether you want to take legal action when someone infringes upon your copyrighted material is up to you. Having a filed and granted application can provide you some peace of mind, however. And the good news? It’s only $55 to file.

If you’re interested in learning more, head to https://copyright.gov/, the same place where you can file your application electronically.

Total thus far: $1,850–$3,350

Your Website

Everyone knows the importance of a good website. Your site gives potential customers a place to find more information about your book. Though there are many different styles of sites you could implement, let’s assume you’re creating a relatively basic landing page.

For an example of what I’m referring to, take a look at the site for my first book: www.gooyhbook.com. As you can see, it’s just a landing page — a place where potential customers can see the look and feel of my brand, come to understand me and the book better, and order my work, if they so choose.

Below, I’ll provide a few options for those of you that want to create a similar kind of landing page. If you’ve already got your site covered, feel free to skip to the grand total below.

1. Use a templating site like SquareSpace or Wix
2. Create a WordPress site with a professional theme that you customize for your brand (see: https://themeforest.net/category/wordpress)
3. Build a custom website with HTML / CSS / your favorite web languages (and, optionally, a ThemeForest theme in this category: https://themeforest.net/category/site-templates)

I went with option two: a WordPress site with a theme that I customized for my book’s brand. Since most of us aren’t full-stack web developers, let’s assume you’re either going with option one or two. And since your site will likely just be a landing page (or a simple set of pages) for now, these options will fit the bill quite nicely.

Though I won’t get into the technical ins and outs of creating your website, there are plenty of good guides online that will help walk you through the process (for example, for a WordPress site, see: https://www.wpbeginner.com/guides/).

The bottom line is, if you’re willing to invest some of your time, creating your book’s website can be one of the cheaper parts of the overall publishing process.

Assuming you’re willing to put the site together on your own, the only things you’ll need to pay for are a domain name and website hosting. Most basic domain names (think: www.thenameofmybook.com) cost about $12/year through Google Domains.

You can host your website through the platform of your choice. Some good options include: AWS, Google Cloud, GoDaddy, and the like. Hosting plans vary depending on the platform you go with and the features you purchase, but an acceptable solution usually costs around $100/year.

That leaves the design of your site as the only remaining piece of the website puzzle. Like I mentioned earlier, you can grab a slick-looking and affordable theme on ThemeForest. This will save you a ton of time versus designing and programming the site all on your own as well as a lot of money versus hiring someone to design your site from scratch. A decent theme will run you about $60.

If you build the site on a template-based platform like SquareSpace, some of these items (domain, hosting, template) may come as part of the bundle you purchase. However, since monthly pricing on sites like SquareSpace tends to be more expensive than buying hosting on your own, most of the “build it yourself” options I’ve covered here end up costing about the same per year, in total.

In sum, you should expect to pay about $200/year total for your website. Subsequent years may be cheaper if you sign long-term commitments with service providers or keep your site’s theme the same from year to year (theme licenses are usually good for several years, if not forever).

One last bit of information here: if you hire a designer to create your book’s cover, use the fonts, graphics, and overall style from it to modify your website’s theme to better fit your brand. If you tell your designer that you’ll be doing this upfront, they can likely even make some assets for you that will be easy to work with on the web.

Grand Total: $2,050-$3,550

So there you have it. If you follow my steps, then the final price for getting your product safely out to the masses will most likely fall between $2,050 and $3,550. Of course, those numbers are only based on my experience.

If you end up finding a designer or editor who costs more or less, that price range will obviously change. However, it’s still nice to have a guideline for determining whether you’re on the right track or not.

Of course, these figures don’t include the valuable time you’ll spend planning, writing, and preparing your book for distribution. That work is what they call sweat equity. Hopefully, in the long run, that equity will help you sell lots and lots of copies of your precious title.

In an upcoming post, I’ll cover what it takes to put your first audiobook out. I’m still working on polishing mine up, which reminds me, I should probably get back to that…

Thanks for reading! Questions? Comments?

Feel free to drop me a comment here. Also, if you’d like to see how my book came out, you can view it on Amazon, here.