How Much Does It Cost to Self-Publish a Book? [2024 Update]

Pull up a chair if you want to know how much it costs to self-publish a book. Using data from the Reedsy publishing marketplace, we'll show you the average costs of professional editing, cover design, formatting, and more.

We'll show you how to save money when publishing your own book and help you budget effectively for your next big book launch.

READ MORE:

00:00 Let's be financially responsible
00:10 Money in self-publishing
01:13 How Does Reedsy Know These Average Costs?
02:25 Editing Costs
04:52 Book Design Costs
07:38 Formatting Costs
09:23 Other Costs
11:00 A final word...

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[sirahj]

Picture books are a completely different market; editing tends to be a very small part of that budget compared to illustration costs.
Take your $27 to the Japanese Stationary Awards and treat yourself to some prizewinning writing tools 🖊

[bakerhalI]

TBH, I was a bit nervous when Shaelin departed. I see that was completely unfounded. This is another example of useful, quality content. Thanks!

[ailover]

Funny thing is, I've read books written by multi-millionaires who clearly haven't bothered with any of this, bad grammar, bad English, spelling mistakes, typesetting errors, unremarkable covers, and their books still hit thousands in sales. This leads me to believe that perhaps it's better to write a so-so book and reserve the bulk of your cash for marketing. Think about it like this, people rarely take a chance on new authors, often preferring to stick to ones they know.

[LisaThomas-TheLiquidator]

Next video: work out the average profit for each book, and how many books you have to sell to break even with those costs…😊

[Eldalynn]

Dang, it’s a lot more than I expected.

[njoyimelisha]

Get yourself drink with the remaining $27.

[Fuliginosus]

Chat GPT tells me that line editing and copy editing are two separate things. Now I'm confused.

[johnpauldagondong]

i'll probably just give up and cry ahahaha

[AdmiralBeethoven]

My advice for first-time authors is to get published by someone else, e.g. Harper Collins, you'll learn an awful lot and after that, you can go into self-publishing. I did the same with my novels and it's my guidance to everyone out there