So, one of my friends linked me to a blog post about how expensive it was to self-publish a book, and I was really surprised at the figures being tossed around. I thought I might talk about how much it cost me, in total, to put out my first book. I’ll tackle the issues roughly in the same order as that blog post.
Editing
This cost me nothing. I have years of experience doing professional editing work for the Government myself, so when I have a few passes through a manuscript it’s in pretty good shape. On top of that, I have my good friend Nathan, who is a fellow writer and has also done editing work for the Government for many years. Nathan, I think, is living a little vicariously through me when it comes to actually finishing and publishing stuff, so he charged me nothing.
Design
This includes internal layouting and the cover. I did all the layout work and such myself, so that cost me nothing at all. As for the cover… again, I’ve been blessed with great creative friends who want to help me succeed and are willing to donate their time. Yolanda, my artist, is my ex-partner and a very good friend. She charged me nothing to design the cover, and I got something I was very happy with.
eBook Design
I did this all myself, it cost nothing.
Printing
I wasn’t super confident about moving a lot of print copies myself, so I did a very small initial print run, sold out very quickly, then did a second small print run, almost sold out, then did a third small print run. I could have saved a decent chunk of money by ordering a larger print run right up (that’s what I did with my second book). I ended up paying roughly $5.50 per book (which is way too much!), with a total print run so far of 200 and sold most of them at $10 each. I’ve got a small amount left (maybe 20?). Online sales have been better than my print sales. My initial print run was only 70 books, so my initial up-front cost was around $385.
Bookstore Distribution
The blog post recommends not bothering with this, as online sales are king. I agree, and while I did contact a number of bookstores, get it on some actual shelves, and it didn’t cost me anything extra… I regret wasting the time and effort. For the effort to profit ratio, this is an extremely poor way to spend limited resources for a self-published author.
Extras
I do my distribution through Amazon, and to sign up with CreateSpace you need an American EIN, which cost me $10 in phone calls to get. Bowker, the ISBN/Barcode people, charged me a $55 first-time publisher fee, $84 for ten ISBNs (I used three, one for print, one for ebook, one for pdf, so plenty left over for two more books), $45 for a barcode for the print version. I pay $12 annually for this webspace. That’s about all my extras.
The blog post also mentions coaching costs, photography costs (I got a headshot done by an amateur photographer friend for free), and marketing as well. I didn’t pay anything for any of these.
After all that, the sum the blog quotes comes to $3,000 at the low end to about $11,450 at the high end, not counting bookstore distribution.
My own total cost was about $600, including my initial print run. Now, if I’d had to pay for editing and cover art, I could maybe see my costs rising match the very low end of the figures it talks about.
I guess I just want to show that it’s not as expensive to self-publish as some people might lead you to believe.
