Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

At every writers conference or self-publishing panel the question that almost always inevitably comes up is: “How much will self-publishing really cost me?”

Because the book publishing industry is one of the last industries to go digital, it’s going through a quick transition. As a result of this shift, authors no longer need to go through the traditional gatekeepers to publish high-quality books and are instead moving toward self-publishing. Launching a book is like launching a startup.

Putting together a quality book involves not just writing it, but getting it edited, then formatted, designing a cover, and having a marketing strategy around it.

Below, I break down the costs of how much professional services will cost you for a high-quality book....

Last week, my seventh book, Philadelphia, was released. In many ways it is the best writing I have ever done, particularly in terms of fiction, and I thought the concept — a collection of short stories, a few op-ed essays, quotes, and lists, all relating to my beloved city of Philadelphia in one way or another — was interesting and appealing.

Clearly, very few people agreed because, well, it didn't exactly do Harry Potter numbers.Don't get me wrong. I'm not naive. This is my seventh time going through this process of self-publishing a book, so it's not like I wasn't prepared. I know the figures. I know that the average U.S. book is now selling less than 250 copies per year and less than 3,000 copies over its lifetime and that over 60% of self-published authors make less than five thousand dollars per year from their writing....

“I just wanted a story with a nice guy.”In late 2012, author H. M. Ward had an experimental manuscript collecting proverbial dust on her computer. It starred a woman named Sidney and a man named Peter—an impossible nice-guy combo of handsome, strong, smart, patient, and, oh, super wealthy.

Ward had been writing since 2010 and had been down the traditional publishing route before, finding an agent and shopping her work around. Her instinct told her that publishers would have no interest in Peter. “If you take a nice-guy book to a traditional publisher,” she says, “They’re like, ‘That’s weird. Nice guys are boring.’”

So in April 2013, she published her manuscript online on her own. “I just put it up out of curiosity to see what would happen,” she says.

Despite reports that e-books are dying, Ward’s chance paid off, and continues to pay out today. According to the author, Damaged shot to No. 6 in Amazon’s Kindle store within a few days and held the No. 1 spot for several weeks. It spent a month on the New York Times bestsellers list for combined print and ebook. It was the first in two series of nice-guy books that would go on to sell 12 million copies in three years.

Publishers took note. In the year after Ward published Damaged, she was offered a series of deals from various publishers totaling $1.5 million, by her estimate. She turned them all down, and by the time she said no to her last contract, she was making eight figures as a self-published author. “It would have been a colossal mistake to sign with them at that point, financially,” she says....

For many authors, self-publishing is a first option instead of a backup to traditional publishing. Two years ago I broke down the costs to self-publish a high-quality book. The costs covered how much a traditional publisher typically spends on a book.

The book publishing industry is one of the last industries to go digital, and things are constantly in flux. What worked yesterday might not work next week.

Putting together a quality book involves not just writing it, but getting it edited and formatted, designing a cover, and having a marketing strategy around it.

The rise of new tools, platforms, and new entrants to the publishing space have made it even easier and faster to get a book out into the world. As a follow-up to my first piece, I’ve written a piece on how to publish on a budget....

Amazon’s new Kindle Unlimited e-book reader subscription program caused a real commotion in the publishing industry last month. But how will this “Netflix for books” model affect the self-publishing industry? Is Kindle Unlimited the best, or should self-publishers join the Scribd or Oyster programs instead? How do you get in? Read on for a comparison of these top three reader subscription programs and best recommendations for self-publishers who are looking to add these channels to their revenue streams....