Like most readers today, you probably think that it’s ok for you to want your books for free or for $0.99 because self-published authors don’t spend any money on publishing. We write at home. We don’t even need pen and paper any more. We write for free on our tablets, then we upload for free on Amazon, and then the money just flows out to us.
The truth is something else, altogether.
First, I cannot write on a tablet. It’s not designed for writing books. The first thing I had to do when I decided to write professionally was to invest in a good desktop setup. A large-sized monitor, a comfortable and sturdy keyboard, a responsive, dependable PC were my tools of choice.
I also included a printer because there is no better way to catch errors than seeing them on a printed page. I bought a simple, black and white printer. Eventually, I was forced to buy a 2nd PC as a backup and then a laptop for when I traveled. I spent over $3000 and that was with buying many renewed items.
Keep in mind that Microsoft no longer gives new PCs a free installation of Word, like they used to do years ago. I had to dish out for a Word 365 yearly subscription, and since I am neither a student nor a teacher, I paid full price for it, about $100 a year.
While Word 365 has a decent editor that is highly usable for common, everyday writing, something more robust and thorough is needed for manuscript editing. So, a subscription to Pro-Writing Aid followed, also yearly, around $120 a year.
I did not buy a book formatting app. Instead, to save money, I delved deep into Word 365 to use its formatting tools. I recently bought a subscription to Scrivener hoping it would be easier to work than Word 365, but I’ve not been able to master it yet.
Once the book is written, I give it a few editing passes with ProWriting Aid, to make it as good as I can. Then, off it goes to the editor. Depending on the word count of the book and the editor, the job can run between $1,500 to $4,000. That’s right!
Now, if I want an audiobook narrated by people, that’s another $2,000 to $4,000, again depending on the word count. I chose not to spend the money. You can have a digitally produced audiobook for a lot less, but it will not be the same quality.
To add insult to injury, all the narrators on Facebook and Reddit will attack you for it. I had a narrator tell me that if I could not afford to pay a narrator, then I did not deserve to have an audiobook.
The cover must look professional and fit the genre. Again, depending on the cover artist and the artwork needed, a cover for an eBook can cost anywhere from $125 to $400. The cover for the paperback can cost double that. If you shop for a premade cover, you might find a cheaper deal for an eBook cover under $125.00.
If you need the book professionally formatted so that it can go through the uploading to Amazon or any other seller and pass the process, then you can spend anywhere from $100 to $400 depending on the kind of book it is (images, tables, illustrations, maps, etc. drive the price up).
I recently bought a block of ISBNs because I want my books listed under me as the publisher and author. One ISBN is $125.00, but each version of a book needs a different ISBN. I bought 100 for $700 because I know they will be going up soon, and in the long run, I will save money.
Now, my eBook is ready for publishing. No one will know it’s available without promotion. The hope is to not only let readers know about its release, but to keep it selling strongly on the Amazon site for at least a month, hopefully more, so that the Amazon algorithm will notice it and give it some help.
That means buying promos, preferably two or more per day, for that first month. For Servant of the Blood, I spent $1,500 on the first two weeks alone! The one-day BookBub New Release feature was $423, and that was for one day!
All the promo sites require that your book be FREE or $0.99 at the time of the promo. Which means that the book was released at $0.99, making me 35 cents per copy. I’d have to sell 4,285 books in that first month just to make the $1,500 back. I sold hundreds.
My books sell at $6.99 regular price. I must constantly keep paying the promos, or the books disappear from view. Amazon takes $2.10 from that $6.99, leaving me $4.89. Now, from that amount, I must pay all the promos, but to promote, I must discount the book! It cannot be sold at regular price.
If you are a best-selling author, the numbers will change because you’re selling thousands of books. However, the majority of us, are not selling thousands of books a month. Instead, we are giving away free books and $0.99 books in the hope that those readers will buy our books at regular price eventually.
The costs of publishing a paperback includes printing, which can be anywhere from $4.00 to $10.00 depending on the size of the book, pages number, and the paper chosen. That’s paid before Amazon takes its 40% on a printed book (higher than for an eBook priced between $2.99 and $12.99). I will not even discuss the printing cost of a hard-cover book.
Finally, there is the cut for the seller. Amazon takes 30% on anything priced between $2.99 to $12.99, and 60% for any pricing outside that boundary. So, after paying all my publishing costs, I get 35 cents for one book sold at $0.99 and maybe $1.50 on a 300-page KU read. You can do the math to see how many books have to be sold to recover all the cost of producing them.
So please, do buy that $6.99 ebook once in a while. Traditionally published eBooks seldom sell below $14.99, and a traditional author pays very little to publish (other than the actual writing implements).
