How Much Does it Cost to Self Publish a Book?

by Panzer
self-publishing a book can cost anywhere from $0 to as much as you want to spend here's a breakdown
of the various self-publishing costs and their average budgets with a few different price points
every draft has to go somewhere and most of us are using some kind of writing program these
days Google Docs is a tried and true favorite of many writers and though it is completely free to
use it does have pretty limited capabilities as far as word processing goes if you want to go the
monthly subscription route there are quite a few very popular options including Ulysses which is
about $6 a month Dabble which runs from $7 to $30 a month and Campfire which can be $16 plus a month
lastly there are the one-time purchase writing softwares that you can own for life these include
Scrivener which is about $60 and Atticus which is about $120 taking those subscription models into
consideration if you take about one year to write a book you're going to come out at about $100
average personally I use Scrivener I purchased it after my second or third book so I've been using
it for a while and it's a good option for me I like to just have the software and own it for life
and not do subscriptions the cost for professional editing can vary significantly depending on many
different factors including your book's genre word count and the type of editor that you choose but
just to give some kind of average here if you're going for an 80,000 word novel you could hire a
very experienced editor for as much as 2,500 for developmental edits 1,900 for line edit or copy
edits and 1,300 for proof reading now with a more average priced editor you could get the
same services for between 1,200 and 1,600 for a developmental edit and then 400 to 800 for a line
or copy edit and 200 to 300 for professional proof reading of course keep in mind that a
lot of Indie authors choose not to do professional developmental editing and instead rely on critique
partners and beta readers to find plot and story and structure issues cover design is next and it
is one of my favorites you can go the DIY route for pretty cheap we're talking $10 to $30 for
your mid-journey subscription and then $20 a month for a Photoshop subscription or you can use a free
program like Gimp or Krita and then of course using online YouTube video tutorials and guides
for doing the actual photoshopping of course if you don't want to use AI you can always go
to reputable stock photography sites and get your images for your cover that way but you will incur
more costs usually to get um usage for commercial rights pre-made book covers are another good
budget option so a lot of really reputable cover designers will have a kind of catalog of pre-made
covers that you can purchase from them and these will run usually around $100 but for this price
you're only getting the ebook cover and there will be extra cost incurred for doing a hardcover or
paperback wrap to have a cover designer create a custom cover for you using stock photography
of your choice this will usually run you somewhere between $200 and $400 for just the ebook and then
another $50 to $150 to get a paperback or hard cover wrap of course there are more expensive
cover designers out there but that's just kind of an average and lastly usually the most expensive
option is getting a custom illustration made and you will still need to do cover design fees on
top of this personally I have not commissioned any art for a cover before but I have seen a
lot of different uh price ranges depending on the skill and availability of different cover
designers so you could get something for looks like about under $300 to over $2,000
it really just depends on what kind of Illustrator you decide to go with I would say the average