If you look at self-published books on Amazon, there is an astonishing variety of quality, to be frank. Some look like they could compete against traditionally published books. Others appear to be lumps of words someone wrote in a hurry and then uploaded immediately afterward.
The key difference between these is what the author paid for (and how much!)
Now, you might be thinking: But I don’t have money! I thought self-publishing was supposed to be free and easy!
Oh, my friend. It’s time to burst that bubble.
You could just type something up and throw that on Amazon. It would be free, and fairly easy. But I’m going to assume that if you’re reading this article, you’re willing to put more effort into self-publishing your book. You’re looking to have something that you can be proud of and that other people might even buy.
In short, this goes back to your goals with this project! (I told you – it always does). Do you want to have a book that is a collection of memories that’s really only for your family? Then maybe you don’t need to pay anyone. Do you want to have A Thing You Can Be Proud Of but don’t necessarily want to make a ton of money on? Then you might want to put some money into it, but not huge amounts. Is your goal to make money and build a career as a self-publish or hybrid publishing author? Then, you know how the saying goes: You have to spend money to make money.
That said, you shouldn’t be taking out a second mortgage to afford self-publishing! My budget, which I’ll share in detail as we go, was around $600. It’s not nothing, but it’s not exorbitant. In fact, most self-published authors spend far more than that. So, the big question is: What should you pay for, and what should you do yourself?
Read part one and part two of this series!
Writing
Personally, I would say to do writing yourself. But, of course, you can hire a ghostwriter. For me, the reason I’m doing this whole thing is to publish a book that I’ve written, so I’m not going to spend money paying someone else to write it. But there are lots of good reasons to use a ghostwriter. Think about your goals, and which option makes sense for you.
My cost: $0
Editing
There are lots of different types of editing, and at each stage, you’ll have to decide if you want to spend money, and how much. This video is a good explainer of the different types of edits. In traditional publishing, you’ll basically have an editor for every single step. In indie publishing, you can hire a freelance editor for each step, but that adds up quickly.
For my book, I did a lot of revisions myself, which you’ll need to do even if you do send it to an editor eventually. Then I decided to use beta readers for big content edits. I had a great group who read through an early draft and gave insightful feedback about characters, story structure, and the plot.
After I worked through those big revisions, I did a micro-edit and polished it until I was happy with each sentence. Then I sent it to a professional proofreader. This is the part of the editing process where I spent money. I went back and forth trying to decide if I wanted to, but I realized that since I was getting physical copies printed, I wanted to make sure this was something I was really proud of since it was pretty set in stone, unlike an ebook when you can upload a newly edited file if needed. I used Judy’s Proofreading. She’s super-fast, detail-oriented, and fairly affordable. Also . . . I’m an editor! So you can always just hire me!
My cost: $.0015/word – $82.91 total
Cover Design
This is the one place that I knew I wanted to spend money. If you ask any successful indie published author, the cover is the one place that they will say you have to hire someone, unless you also happen to be a professional cover designer. It’s not just a matter of having an eye for design or the technical knowledge of using the software; it’s about knowing what is expected for a book cover in a certain genre and when to follow the rules and when to break them.
Costs for covers can vary wildly. You can purchase premade covers that tend to be cheaper than custom; an illustrated or heavily Photoshopped cover for a genre like fantasy or sci-fi will be more expensive than a photograph cover for a contemporary book. I knew that I wanted an illustrated cover, and I also happened to have a graphic designer friend whose style I loved and I knew would do a great job, so I hired Kyle DeMarco to design my cover (and he did a great job!!)
Other companies I’ve heard good things about include: Carpe Librum, Wynter Designs, Parker Book Designs, and Go On Write.
My cost: $300
Interior Formatting
For your book to be book-like, it needs to be formatted differently than a simple Word document. There are lots of expensive services that will do formatting for you, or you can even buy templates and do it partially yourself. From nearly everything I’ve heard, these services aren’t worth it. If you’re doing a standard text-heavy book (so not lots of illustrations or charts or graphic elements), you can do it yourself pretty easily. Here’s a great guide.
If you plan on writing and publishing lots of books, most indie authors recommend purchasing Vellum, which is the best program for interior formatting. Since right now I’m only planning on doing this one self-published book, I used this video to format it for ebook, then, keeping all the style guides I made in it, downloaded a free template in the trim size I’m using to format it.
My cost: $0
Sensitivity Readers
Now, not everyone will have this cost, but if you have any characters who have life experiences majorly different from you, whether it’s race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, even geographic location, I highly recommend you hire a sensitivity reader. I have several characters of color and LGBT+ characters, so I knew I wanted to hire readers with those experiences to make sure I had authentically and accurately written those characters. Here’s a great guide to writing inclusive fiction that also recommends several sensitivity reader directories. You can also search for them on Twitter, or just Google. I used Salt & Sage Books and had a fantastic experience.
My cost: $.0065/word or $141.70 total
Marketing
If you want to sell copies of your book to more people than just your friends and family, you’ll need to invest in marketing. There are lot of different ways to do this that fit a variety of budgets. Some authors who are writing and releasing several books a year will reach a point that they hire someone to do all of their marketing for them. For most first-time authors, that’s not a good use of money. But, you can expect to spend some money on marketing. Facebook ads and Amazon ads are the two main ways most authors advertise. Here’s a great article on setting up your first Amazon ad. This article explains the difference between the two and how to use both.
If you want to advertise for free, newsletter swaps are the way to go. You’ll need to have an email list that you send out regular newsletters to for this, which is something you’ll want to be working on building far in advance of your book release. Once you have an email list, you basically plan to swap advertising with other authors in a similar genre, meaning that you’ll promote your book to your list and they’ll promote yours to theirs. This post explains it in more detail, but once you find some good author newsletter swap groups, it can be a great way to advertise without spending any money.
My cost: $50 budgeted for Amazon and Facebook ads + free newsletter swaps
So there you go! It may seem like a lot to think through, but as long as you have your guiding goal for this project, the answers to these decisions should be fairly clear to you.
What are some of self-published books the best covers? What are you planning to spend money on when you self-publish? Let me know in the comments!
Featured photo by Christin Hume