There is no single answer to the question, “How much does it cost to publish a book?” This is not only because there are different options for publishing a book, but also because books need different amounts of work—and therefore time and money—to bring them to a publishable standard. Add to that you have varying degrees of quality in the finished product. Unfortunately paying more does not guarantee better quality.
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Publishing options
Legacy publishing
Mainstream or legacy publishing is selective. It requires you to submit your manuscript to literary agents and publishers, then they pay the costs of publishing and give you royalties from the sales. It doesn’t cost you anything to publish this way, not even for any further editing your book might require after you’ve signed the publisher’s contract. But the process takes a long time and very few books are selected. It’s usually several months before you hear back from them and mostly your manuscript will be rejected. They look for books that will sell well and that are skilfully written so they don’t have to spend a lot of money on editing, so if your book has already had developmental and line editing, they’re more likely to read it all the way through.
But if your book is unusual or only for a niche market, you’ll not score a deal, because sales are most important for legacy publishers. After all, they put up the money for publishing, so they want books that will make that money back for them.
If you do get a deal it is usually another 18 months before your book will hit the shelves, and then … well, let’s just say, it’s a highly competitive field.
I got an agent for my first book, Lethal Inheritance, and I missed out on several publishing deals because they “had enough YA books for the year”, or they already had a couple of books with demons in them lined up for publication, and in the last one, the editors loved the book but the marketing department didn’t know how to sell it. The marketing department has the final say.
Self-publishing service providers and vanity publishers
These are companies that will publish anyone’s book regardless of its quality, but the author pays. It’s also called assisted self-publishing, so you’re self-publishing without doing it all yourself. Here you give them your book and they publish it for you. Unfortunately the quality of books produced by such companies is, in general, not particularly good, and if you publish with them, you place your book in the same category. I have seen books published by such companies, books where the author has paid for ‘editing’ and yet the book is full of flaws. I’ve re-edited and re-published such books.
If you take this route, you need to have had the editing done yourself beforehand because you cannot trust most of them to do it for you, even if you pay for ‘editing’. In most cases in such companies, what they call ‘editing’ is just a proofread. But most books need all four kinds of editing.
There are a lot of different companies in this category, but the ones known as vanity publishers will still, even after you’ve paid for the publishing, take a large chunk of the income from sales. This never seemed fair to me. If you’re paying for publishing you should be getting most of the income from sales.
Hybrid Publishers
A hybrid publisher is a selective, author-funded publisher, one that has a selection process, as with legacy publishing, but the author pays for them to do the publishing. In hybrid publishing the author should get the majority of the income from sales. This kind of publisher is a growing breed, and my publishing company AIA Publishing is one of them. Hybrid Publishers do not all operate the same way, so you need to examine your options carefully.
The beauty of hybrid publishing is that because the author funds the project, the publisher does not have to take potential sales into account when selecting from submissions, which means that if your book is unusual, ground-breaking or for a niche market, you’ll still have a good chance of your book being selected. And if your book is selected, then you get a stamp of approval similar to getting a legacy publishing deal. Your book is not self-published and so avoids that stigma. It is author-funded, but it has been selected because the publisher believes it’s worth publishing; they’re not publishing it just because they’re being paid to do so.
Requirements for selection varies from company to company, but in the case of AIA Publishing since it’s an offshoot of my editing business, I don’t need to publish lots of books to make an income, so I can afford to be highly selective.
The quality of books published by hybrid publishers also varies from company to company. Because they have a selection process, they should be more likely to produce a quality product than a self-publishing service provider, but it all depends on the people making the decisions and on what kind of editing they do, or require the book to have had previous to selection. Either way, you’ll be paying for publishing.
Self-publishing
True self-publishing is doing the publishing yourself. It’s the cheapest option, but also the most time consuming because you have to learn a whole new business. And the quality of your product depends on how well you learn your business and the quality of the professionals you employ to help you.
Doing it yourself
If you want a quality product (and why wouldn’t you?) then even if you’re self-publishing you can’t avoid paying for professionals to do your cover, editing and ebook formatting.
You can format the paperback interior yourself quite simply using Word, but you’ll probably make mistakes that, to anyone who knows about book formatting, will scream ‘self-published.’ Getting your margins and page numbering right isn’t easy the first time round, and did you know that the first line of any chapter or section break is not indented? And then you have to prepare the document to meet the printer specifications, and for Ingram Spark you’ll need professional Adobe Acrobat software in order to do that. There’s a lot to learn, and it’s very time consuming and easy to make mistakes. So paying a professional to do it for you is worth it to avoid the headache.
Once you have your files, you can easily upload them yourself to Amazon for both the ebook and paperback, and that’s fine if you live in the USA or the UK and only want to sell your book in those countries. (Amazon will sell them elsewhere, but they take most of the money). If you’re in Australia or New Zealand, however, and you take this option, you’ll have to buy your book from Amazon’s printers in the US and pay international postage. Getting a box of books to sell yourself is not practical.
If you want international distribution so readers can order your book through any bookshop, you’ll need to go through Ingram Spark. They have a printer (Lightning Source) in Australia, making it easy for Australians to get their book at a decent price. Of course, you can set up your own account with them, but that’s a complex procedure, and if you want a life apart from publishing your book, it’s not a route you’ll want to take.
Doing it cheap or doing it well.
Some people skip editing, do their own cover and even their own ebook formatting.
There’s free software for creating ebooks, but it doesn’t do a good job, and Smashwords creates ebooks for you from a Word document, but they rarely come out looking good.
And …
You probably think that cover you designed looks good, but a graphic designer will be rolling their eyes in horror, and readers will skip your book because it doesn’t look professional. Do you trust yourself to know what you’re doing enough to risk using a cover you’ve made yourself?
As for editing …
Proofreading is not editing. There are four kinds of editing, and for a book to be fully professional, it needs all four kinds: developmental editing, line editing, copy editing and proofreading. And though your family members and friends can give you feedback on your story, only a publishing professional will give you the kind of detailed guidance you need to be sure that you’re not producing a lemon.
So if you want your friends and work colleagues to be impressed with your book instead of embarrassed for you, you’re going to have to fork out some money.
So how much does it cost to publish a book?
Full editing and publishing with a hybrid publisher like AIA Publishing can be as much as $3500 US and even more if your book needs a huge amount of editing, but it can also be as little as $1000 US if it only needs a proofread. Publishing packages at big vanity publishers can be around $5000 USD and still not include comprehensive editing. Some companies are known for promising and charging a lot and delivering little, so you need to do your research before signing up with a self-publishing service provider.
If you do it yourself, and pay professionals for cover, formatting and proofread. It’ll still cost around $800-$1000 depending on which professionals you use. If you format and do the cover yourself, a quality proofread alone will cost you around $400 at least for a full-length novel. I don’t recommend relying on a friend (even if they are a school teacher) or anyone who is not an experienced proof reader.
That will give you some idea of the costs involved, but note that they are only rough estimates as of September 2018. The question you’ll likely want to ask yourself now is, “Is my book worth the cost publishing?” And that’s the topic of the next blog post. Don’t miss it! Download my Free Novel Revision Checklist now and have the next post sent directly to your inbox.
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If you like this post or have anything to add, please leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you. And if you’re looking for an editor and you think I might be a good match, I recommend booking a manuscript appraisal because even if you don’t employ me to edit your book, you’ll get the benefit of my opinion and suggestions.
This is part of a series of blog posts on how to write a novel. It doesn’t just cover the technical details, but also the emotional journey we take and the personal challenges we meet on the road from potential author to author. Join the journey now, and don’t miss a post, click here to sign up to get my Novel Revision Checklist and links to the articles sent to your inbox.
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