Ebook Setup Costs?

[Balthane]

I've been reading more and more about people going out there and doing their own ebooks for Kindle and Nook. The stories are really aspiring, but one of the things I haven't heard about is how much it costs to do it on your own.

Book Cover
Ebook Designer
Freelance Editor

The only thing I've seen so far, is in order to get a professionally looking cover ranges from 150-300 dollars.

So I was wondering if anyone would like to share how much it took them to launch their first self-pub ebook. I know each project is different, but it would be nice to see a price range.

I know that some writers simply can't afford to go the self-pub route. Any advice for them?

[izanobu]

Covers- varies. I have a designer who does them for 35 + cost of image rights (if any). I have two artist friends who are working for me for cheap (one totally free, other nominal payment) because they are friends.

Editor- found a good copy-editor who came well-recommended who costs 25 an hour (edits about 20 pages an hour). Definitely worth it.

Ebook formatting- Free. I do it myself. It's really not that hard to learn and pretty simple once you've done it once or twice (I can now format an ebook for Smashwords, Amazon, and B&N in less than an hour).

So for my novel coming out soon, total costs will be about 400 (cover + editor). I could have done it for free, but I am dyslexic and feel having a professional copy-editor go over my work is worth the price, as is having custom cover art/design for a novel like this.

Everything you list can be done free or very cheap. Formatting is easy to learn, just takes a little time. Covers can be designed using free software and free or cheap images (most royalty-free stock images can be purchased in good resolution for 15 or less). Editing can be done by a friend with a good eye, it'll just probably take more passes and time to make sure it is done right. Or you could see if your local university has a publishing graduate program and if any of the students want to earn a little extra money while beefing up a resume (personally, I'd pay them at least something... if not an established professional's rates).

Hope that helps! :)

[Erik M]

Cover design you mentioned. Formatting for Smashwords is easy, but if you want to format for say Kindle and aren't comfortable with html (which I am not) one can get a book properly formatted for a couple hundred dollars.

[veinglory]

I would expect to pay at least $300 for basic cover and copy-editing on a novel.

[Balthane]

Thanks everyone for the reply. I really appreciate it.

[kateharp]

I learned everything on my own and I was surprised it wasn't that complicated just to put it into MS Word. I spent nothing...but I also know photoshop -- I think that helps if your book has a lot of images.

[Nadia]

About $300-400 total (cover, editing, etc.) per novel

[T_Jager]

I've done everything myself. Just takes time and patience.

[veinglory]

In my opinion there is a difference to what a most amateurs can acheive and what a professional will.

[Balthane]

Thanks everyone for getting back to me on this. I really appreciate it.

[K. Taylor]

Kindle formatting tutorial: http://guidohenkel.com/2010/12/take-pride-in-your-ebook-formatting/

I know of an artist that does $50 custom covers and I've gotten a quote for novel formatting up to 150K for $150.

[yvonne58]

I'd love to find someone to copyedit my book. I've been a full time graphic designer for 25 years, so I will be designing my own covers, but I won't even tackle the copy editing. It takes a skilled professional to catch all the little typos most of us miss. Plus, that fresh pair of eyes is invaluable. Does anyone know of a copy editor or service that does a good job for a reasonable price?

[lvcabbie]

I'd love to find someone to copyedit my book. I've been a full time graphic designer for 25 years, so I will be designing my own covers, but I won't even tackle the copy editing. It takes a skilled professional to catch all the little typos most of us miss. Plus, that fresh pair of eyes is invaluable. Does anyone know of a copy editor or service that does a good job for a reasonable price?

You might check out the beta reader's thread. Also, you might post a sample so someone will know the level of your work.;)

[deborahlea]

I'd love to find someone to copyedit my book. I've been a full time graphic designer for 25 years, so I will be designing my own covers, but I won't even tackle the copy editing. It takes a skilled professional to catch all the little typos most of us miss. Plus, that fresh pair of eyes is invaluable. Does anyone know of a copy editor or service that does a good job for a reasonable price?

This is something I've thought a lot about since I published my book a month ago. I feel like eyes that are looking for content aren't going to see all of the form, and vice versa. My YA novel is consequently with a copy editor now.

I found said copy editor by posting my project on ifreelance.com. (I started by looking at ratings of existing editors, but that was overwhelming. Tons of folks have good rates and perfect 10 ratings.) I actually got 10 bids over a couple of days, which led me to end bidding a little early.

The good news is the editor's said my book's in good shape even sans edits. This is comforting since, when I've imagined it the last week or so, I imagine every other word's a glaring typo. :p

ETA: I forgot to answer the initial question! I paid $100 for my novel's cover, which covered both the print and e-book covers. The estimate for copy editing my 52k word novel was $300, which was in part based on it being "in good shape." (Bids ranged from $200-900.)

[valeriec80]

Over in the self-pub POD covers forum, our own leahzero is offering to design ebook covers for free. She's got some samples up and they look awesome. As of right now, she's got no takers that I can see, so get on that. :)

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=205173

Oh--it cost me zilch to publish an ebook, but I design my own covers and use beta readers for editing, which isn't the direction everyone can or wants to go.

[lvcabbie]

Over in the self-pub POD covers forum, our own leahzero is offering to design ebook covers for free. She's got some samples up and they look awesome. As of right now, she's got no takers that I can see, so get on that. :)

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=205173

Oh--it cost me zilch to publish an ebook, but I design my own covers and use beta readers for editing, which isn't the direction everyone can or wants to go.

I am certainly going to use the cover she created for my FOLLOW THE RAVEN!!!!!!!:hooray:

[spacejock2]

In terms of interior design, I recently uploaded a beta of yWriter5 which will turn your book into a properly formatted HTML file ripe for conversion using Calibre.

Unlike print publishing, there's not as much you can do about typesetting for ebooks. Things like changing the kerning to move a stray word off a line, or keeping widows and orphans in check, don't apply to an ebook where the reading device does all the work.

[lvcabbie]

:flag:As I've just found out the very hard way, formatting an e-book isn't all that easy.
FIRST your original document has to be error free!
I went over one and found little spots where I hadn't completely covered/erased color markers and failed to correctly set up italics. That meant going over the entire thing in WordPad to see what the errors were and then translating it back to MSWord before turning it into a html document.

Gave it a whole new meaning to EDIT/REVISE!!!!!

:Shrug:

[euclid]

I read somewhere that version 2 of Scrivener will convert text to lots of ebook formats, like .mobi (for Kindle). Here's the link:

http://bibliophilia.typepad.com/writing-like-a-shark/2011/02/a-picture-is-worth-a-thousand-cliches-scrivener-in-action.html

However, Version 2 of Scrivener is not available on PC yet (only available on Mac).

[Ghost Writer]

I think it's very important for the book to have the same 'look' as a traditionally published book. If you want to keep publishing ebooks, I can't stress this enough.

If you're VERY good at art, you can create a cover for free. Be careful here. Don't skimp. Make your cover pop. Think about it - in a sea of ebooks, covers count. Cost? Free - $1500 )for high-quality, CUSTOM artwork). Yeah, $1500 is far too rich for my blood at this stage, but I know others who have spent this to ensure no other cover will look like theirs.

Editing. I have two friends who are editors. Lucky me. I'd start with having other people read your book for grammar, typos, etc. Then I'd read it out loud. You'd be surprised at what you'll catch. Also, print it out. You'll catch stuff there, too.

Then, find a good editor. RedAdept is a good one (so I hear). The cleaner your copy is going in, the better the whole book will be when they're done. Cost varies, depending on what you need: story editing? Copy editing? Both? Average is around $300 per read.

Formatting. Around $75-$125. Unless you can do it yourself. I did. I use Scrivener 2.0 and it's a Godsend, let me tell you. Write in Scrivener and export your document. Or, go to Smashwords and download their manual on how to format for epub. I suggest using the Kindle simulator to inspect your book for formatting errors for each version/type of device.

Promotion. Personally, I wouldn't pay for a review. Just be prepared that you will spend a HUGE amount of time promoting your book for the first few weeks. It really cuts into your writing time. Still, you'd have to do this if you were traditionally published. A friend is spending over 20% of her royalties on promoting her book (book signings, ads, a professional book promoter, conventions).

Our time spent is close to the same in hours. Her promotion of her traditional book just cost more than what I'll end up spending on ads in Kindle Nation, etc.

Anyway, just my .02 cents and short-term experience in all this.

[FranYoakumVeal]

Over in the self-pub POD covers forum, our own leahzero is offering to design ebook covers for free. She's got some samples up and they look awesome. As of right now, she's got no takers that I can see, so get on that. :)

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=205173

Oh--it cost me zilch to publish an ebook, but I design my own covers and use beta readers for editing, which isn't the direction everyone can or wants to go.

Actually, I posted a request to leahzero about a week ago. Haven't heard back from her so she may be a little backed up. Worth a try, though.

[Captain Ian]

Paid $300 for my cover, and it's pretty damn good, even if I say so myself. Having seen some of the poor formatting of Kindle books done by the Big 6, I hand-coded my novel in one week, and I'm very proud of the result. I can honestly say I've done a better job. Given that copyediting is now often outsourced instead of being done in-house, my product matches any of theirs in terms of quality.

[Ghost Writer]

Ian - that is a very professional cover you've got there. Best of luck with your book!

[valeriec80]

A week to code your book? Maybe you're doing more complicated stuff than I am, but it takes me about five minutes to code to html. Word's search and replace function can really speed it up. Handy symbols are ^p (to indicate paragraphs), ^& (=the found text). You can also get into the formatting section pretty easily too.

In practice then, you'd do something like Search for "^p," Replace with "</p>^p<p>", and that would get all your paragraphs, (but you'd have to delete your first little naggly close paragraph tag), Search for centered text, Replace with <center>^&</center>, etc.

When done, you can copy the whole thing into a notepad file, pop <html><body> at the top and </body></html> at the end and you're good.

Of course, I wouldn't know how to do fancy junk like interactive tables of contents and whatnot, so maybe I'm not being helpful. Just thought I'd share, though, in case it's useful for anyone.