Average Cost for Self Pubbing

a.c.:

The variables are so great I don't know if it is possible to come up with averages. I have nine items self-published (all nine as e-books and three also as print books). I was able to figure enough out that my only costs were $50 for one e-cover and about $65 for formatting the e-book/print book that was heavy with graphics. I don't take the Amazon enhanced distribution services.

I'd say that editing would normally be the most expensive of the services you mention. I haven't used editing services other than beta readers. Whether that's foolish on my part I don't know, but it seems to be working for me so far. Any marketing I've done has been free notices.

You left out cover. That's one of the things that is most worth paying for. A quality cover sends a strong signal to readers that the book was produced with care.

Marketing: Zero. (I have yet to see services that offer marketing to authors that are worth anything. Most marketing worth doing costs time from the author, not money.)

Formatting: Up to $100 for narrative. Pictures or complex graphics could be more. Print could be more. (Ebook formatting is a very learnable skill, so zero is not uncommon.)

Editing: Up to several thousand. This tends to be largest single expense and the most valuable one for a good percentage of authors. What any particular author needs is quite variable. Just a proofread (misnomer)? Development editing? A solid copyedit? All of the above? It depends. If you don't know what you need, you need to gather opinions from knowledgable readers and perhaps through some more general discussion with potential editors about your specific book. What you generally are not going to be able to get is the depth and quality of editing you would recieve with a major trade publisher so this tends to be an exercise in budgeting and getting the most bang for your buck based on your specific prose.

Cover: Ranges from $50 to $500 or so for mostly stock art, photo manipulation and some custom illustration at the high end.

Listing & Distributon: Generally free. You should only be paying the percentage of sales to retailers like Amazon or BN (30% to 70%) and a smaller percentage to an aggregator like Smashwords (10% to 15%). Up front fees for this service are often a sign of a vendor you should avoid.

Assuming fiction, a variable to consider would be word count, which effects the time an editor, layout designer, and typesetter would spend on the project. To a lesser extent, it might influence cover design too, since you'd hope the artist would read enough of the book to get an idea of how to convey its story.

Non-fiction how-to books would be more expensive, depending on the complexity of the content and the need for a technical editor to look for bugs and techie errors in the content.

Then there is the cost of ISBNs (one for each format), author proof copies of print editions, and, if you use a POD service such as Lightning Source, there could be setup charges for each title. Add in local fees for your LLC or DBA license registration and whatever your bank requires to set up a business bank account. Can you do your own accounting and taxes?

I haven't provided any answers here, though. I am interested in the answers too. But, if you're going to put out money in the hopes that you'll have a better-than-average book, you might want to pony up the bread and employ a dream team. Will sales offset that expense? No telling.

Can't help with marketing. I don't know squat about what works. Neither, I suspect, does anyone else. The only approach I've read that makes sense is to write and publish more books.

acockey said:

@Al Stevens... I don't think writing more books is the end all be all in advertising in books. I think you can go to Conventions, book stores, reading groups, blogs, and do the same

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I think Al's point stands. On average, that kind of marketing doesn't tend to sell more books than spending the same time writing more books to sell. If you enjoy doing those things anyway, then there's no harm in doing what you enjoy and maybe selling a few more copies of an individual book at the expense of having more books to sell, but those ideas mostly operate on flawed thinking that self-publishing a book is an event. Anyone can publish a book now--it's not special. The only thing that might be special is the quality of the book itself. Those venues tend to be buried under an avalanche of self-published books that are of questionable quality already and even if yours isn't, it's nearly impossible for them to seperate the wheat from the chaff.

J. Tanner said:

... Most marketing worth doing costs time from the author, not money...
Ebook formatting is a very learnable skill, so zero is not uncommon...

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A writer's time isn't money?

Anywhere from $10 to $4,000. It all depends on what your skill set is, how much money you want to spend and what your business plan is. Editing and cover art are two areas that are worth spending more money for, IMHO.

acockey said:

@Al Stevens... I don't think writing more books is the end all be all in advertising in books. I think you can go to Conventions, book stores, reading groups, blogs, and do the same

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Let's talk about that.

1. SP'd author writes a book and sells a shipload of them
2. The sales attract attention among other authors
3. The author writes another book describing how s/he did it
4. Everyone else buys the how-to book and applies the presumed winning formula

But it no longer works. Why? There's only so much revenue to go around, and it's being evenly distributed among all the authors who have applied the new approach. So...

1. Another author SP's a book, uses a different aproach to marketing, and sells a shipload of books
2. And so on...

Conventional wisdom has said here many times that the best way to call attention to your writing is to have more books out there. Even if you by chance do well with your only book, its time comes and goes. To build a following, you need more books for your growing fanbase to buy. You won't get more books written going to conventions. Or poring over countless blogs. Or posting here.

acockey said:

@Al Wilson I agree with your point but add a counter point. What about keeping your reader in suspense. I would personally not care if I had to wait a year to have two book to promote.

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Wilson? Do I really look that much like a volleyball?

Readers won't wait in suspense. It's a fickle public out there. They forget you and go with the latest hotshot. You'll be starting all over again if you wait too long.

(We're almost neighbors. I played a New Year's Eve gig over there this year.)

acockey said:

@Al Wilson I agree with your point but add a counter point. What about keeping your reader in suspense. I would personally not care if I had to wait a year to have two book to promote.

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Keeping your reader in suspense? You almost make that sound like it's a positive, that it will build expectation.

If a reader likes your first book, they will want to read another one ASAP. If they have to wait, they will, but odds are, if it's a year until your next one comes out, they will have forgotten all about you. Those stories about people waiting desperately for the next volume in some beloved series, e-mailing the author, begging for another, are about established series, with big followings.
Not first time books, by unknowns.

It's worse if it's the first book of some proposed series, ie incomplete in itself. I know people who deliberately hold off on reading the first book of a series by a writer they don't know, because there's a reasonable chance that the author won't follow through. Either not write the next book, make people wait for a couple of years to finish the story, or change whatever they liked about the first book. Heck, I know people who hold off on starting series by authors they do know, for the same reasons. I blame the trilogy fetish, myself.
'Write another book' is not the same as 'write a sequel', but ideally, you want to get something out there while they still remember your first book.

I only have one self-published book, and it's an e-book (too short to do print; it's a romance novella. Or short story, depending on how you classify).

I paid $50 for cover art and $90 for editing. My husband checked out some online tutorials and taught himself to format it, so I did the Kindle formatting myself because it was fairly easy through Amazon's site, and he did the epub version.

I haven't paid anything to market/promote it; I use the same venues I use for my publisher-published romance. Online review blogs, online promo groups on Yahoo and Facebook, my Goodreads and Amazon author profiles, and of course my website.

After doing *a lot* of research about costs, I budgeted $1200 for editing and cover art for my first novel (70,000+ words). I found an experienced editor I wanted to work with for copy editing and line-editing (which was all I could afford, and her services were worth every penny), and I hired the artist who did the covers of some books I really liked.

I ended up spending less than I planned, which was a bonus. In retrospect, I should have used some of the money that wasn't spent to hire someone else to do the e-book formatting and I'll probably do that next time around. I hated doing that, with every fibre of my being. I'm also considering hiring someone to do the typesetting for the print edition of the next book, but we'll see.

I wanted to produce a book that was professional as possible and I had the means to hire people to help me do that. At the bare minimum, I would urge someone considering self-pubbing to spend as much as they can afford on editing and cover art.

acockey said:

I just don't believe pumping out books has to be the end all be all in promoting your self pubbed book

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It's not the be all, end all; it's just the most consistently effective based on my experience following a number of authors experimenting with self publishing over the past couple years.

Another alternative is building up a large online "platform" through some personal expertise you have that also might have some crossover into your book. For example, if you are a world war 2 historian and spend years building up a following for your WW2 blog, then write a novel about WW2 your platform is a good marketing tool. But this tends to be an impossible thing to recommend to a new author because they've got the cart before the horse. But if you have built that already, it works.

Looking for opportunities to game systems can work, but it's not recommended for obvious reasons.

Free content can be effective, but generally only if you have other product to sell. ("Write more" often ties back into a long-term plan to use "free" to some extent.)

Advertising does not tend to have a good cost/benefit ratio. (Once in a while someplace does well, authors find out, and then its prices increase to compensate or the waiting list becomes astronomically long.)

Personal appearances do not tend to have a good cost/benefit ratio for new authors. You might do something local upon release if you have a good sized local support group in some regard.

acockey said:

I just don't believe pumping out books has to be the end all be all in promoting your self pubbed book

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It isn't. It's more important to write a well-written book that is formatted correctly and available through as many sales channels as possible at a reasonable price. I don't "pump out books." I do write quickly and I am a very fast typist, but I don't feel pushed to write fast. It's just my speed and it happens to be faster than some writers and slower than others.

Having more content available for people to read is a good thing. Build it at a speed that is comfortable for you.

I will say that I see a sales bump whenever I release a new title. Can't deny that it does make a difference.

acockey said:

@frimble3 I just don't believe pumping out books has to be the end all be all in promoting your self pubbed book

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And yet you're the one here asking for advice because of inexperience, right?

acockey said:

@dogpie that is correct, but I am able to observe and comment even though I am indeed a novice, however I do acknowledge that those commenting have more experience. Back to my original question: your estimation on costs to start up?

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I had about a dozen beta readers and went through several drafts on mine, and I'm trained enough and decent enough at editing (along with beta readers' suggestions) to do it myself. Formatting I did myself. Cover design I spent $400.

So $400. And no, conventions and legwork and all that stuff aren't worth your time, especially for an unknown author. It's all online these days, focus on writing more books and expanding your backlist.

Expensive contrary to popular belief! I've self published four ebooks now, simply because what the publisher wanted and what I was willing to write were two entirely different things. The publishers wanted some one to puke out the same tripe on Natural Dyeing that other writers had been writing for the better part of a decade, ie you can dye with berries. Not true and I wasn't going to be a part of that.

So costs:

Well you need a computer and internet access, me I'm on a desktop that I had to upgrade twice last year to the tune of $1800 USD Then there's the programs for writing, I'm using Word '10 and Adobe's Indesign. I couldn't afford to upgrade to Adobe's latest generation so I'm subscribing to the cloud, not cheap.

Then there's the camera for the images for the how-to ebooks and the photo editing programs - I'm using Photoshop. You also need Illustrator to make graphics come out right in the ebooks. This meant I needed to learn how to use illustrator so I subscribed to Lynda.com to accomplish that task.

Then there's the download service for the ebook once it's edited and ready to sell... I'm using ejunkie.com and I sell through my hosted websites, and I have seven blogs, and two FB fans pages ALL for marketing my books and my studio because people become tired of sales pitch only so you have to give them a reason to want to buy your books. I also own my own NING network where I teach online classes which sell my eBooks.

This doesn't include the hours spent writing, dyeing fabric, creating samples, taking photos ok those photos suck so now I need to change my lighting and take more photos. Hours spent learning how to have the lighting just so so that the fabric looks like something you'd want to roll around naked in as in orgasmic, well I never achieved that one.

Oh yeah and then there's the expense of buying the materials for the book samples, I used cotton, silk, wool, and hemp fabrics, fibers, and yarns as well as high quality papers and braintan. And then there's the cost of the natural dye materials themselves, those are not exactly cheap these days with Cochineal running anywhere from $90-300 a pound. And then there's the time invested in making the samples, we're talking hundreds if not thousands of hours here. Lots of fun but still time and effort invested none the less.

And the time finding someone to edit my books for me. I live in a college town so that isn't all that hard to do, lots of would be writers and editors here who'll work in exchange for food.

So in a nutshell... it's expensive... I'm working on my 2012 numbers this week after all it's tax time.

Milkweed from the land where the weeds are milky!

It's incredibly silly to add the costs of things like your computer upgrades and internet access, and all of the other side-things you mentioned. Those things are expected when you start talking about self-publishing. That's like answering a "How much is a microwave?" question with "well first you have to buy a house with a kitchen, so very expensive."

Your experience is a fairly unique one, so it isn't fair either to include the costs of writing your book. They aren't related to the self-publishing part, which would be formatting/editing/cover.

For me it's been $10 for a stock photo (be sure to read the fine print, give proper credit for the image and stay within the number of copies allowed) for the cover. A small amount for my domain name and website (less than $50). $25 for expanded distribution for paperback version of each book through CreateSpace (used to be $40).

I do my own formatting/layout for e-book and paperback books as well as modify the stock images for book covers, which I also create myself. I have two beta readers and one woman who's a voracious reader. They are indispensable.

I hope to have a professional editor some day as well as a graphic artist for my covers.

So, it's been $10 for an e-book, $25 (plus $10 for a proof copy) for paperback books.

acockey said:

@Al Stevens... I don't think writing more books is the end all be all in advertising in books. I think you can go to Conventions, book stores, reading groups, blogs, and do the same

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Which costs on average $3000 to $15,000 per gig, I know from experience, been there and done that! Sounds like you really don't have a clue, if you think your going to walk around a convention and sell your book willy nilly w/o a booth think again! There are tons of staff on hand to ensure that those doing such things are tossed from the convention center an are very often arrested for soliciting w/o a license.

merrihiatt said:

For me it's been $10 for a stock photo (be sure to read the fine print, give proper credit for the image and stay within the number of copies allowed) for the cover. A small amount for my domain name and website (less than $50). $25 for expanded distribution for paperback version of each book through CreateSpace (used to be $40).

I do my own formatting/layout for e-book and paperback books as well as modify the stock images for book covers, which I also create myself. I have two beta readers and one woman who's a voracious reader. They are indispensable.

I hope to have a professional editor some day as well as a graphic artist for my covers.

So, it's been $10 for an e-book, $25 (plus $10 for a proof copy) for paperback books.

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How much did your computer cost? Your internet access? The programs your writing your books in? Upgrades? Your time is also worth something otherwise your just a hobbiest. How about any research you had to do for your book?

You may not think that those things should be factored in but in fact they should be and the IRS even EXPECTS them to be factored in through depreciation.