One of the biggest questions is how much does self-publishing cost? The answer is: how long is a piece of string?
You can self-publish for free, or you can invest tens of thousands of dollars into it. I advise that you find a happy medium that works for you. But please remember this:
The number one goal of a self-published author should be to appear traditionally published.
Unless you have a lovely family of editors and graphic designers at your disposal, this will only be achieved by investing in professional publishing services. I will be focusing on publishing via Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing for both print and Kindle, and Ingram Spark for print.
In subsequent posts, I will break down my self-publishing process step by step, but for now, I will list it out with rough costs.
Below is a condensed list:
You can add all sorts of bells and whistles to your publishing costs – book tour travels, printed marketing materials, lawyers, etc, but I am outlining what I did as a freelancer striking a balance between what is needed to appear traditionally published.
In the following posts, I will outline these steps along with their costs in greater detail.
First up: Editing your Manuscript.