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ePublish a Book » Book Promotion, Resources » How to fund self-publishing your book? How much do you need to self-publish your book?

How to fund self-publishing your book? How much do you need to self-publish your book?

August 6th, 2012 | 8 Comments

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Need an advance for your book? Self-Publishers Welcome!

How to fund self-publishing your book? How much do you need to self-publish your book?

3 weeks ago, we published a post titled Need an advance for your book? Get your future readers to fund you!

This post has already been read over 750 times, more than twice the average read per post of 350, putting it in second position behind Self-Publishers Beware – Analysis of the way some publishing enablers are preying on unwary writers that got 1057 hits. This clearly indicates that writers are keenly interested in the crowdfunding approach to finance self-publishing costs. So we had a closer look at the crowdfunding sources for self-publishers. We have located one additional potential source of crowdfunding for self-publishers, Indiegogo, which is sometimes quoted alongside Kickstarter as a main crowdfunding source.

We also had a look at what amount of money is a reasonable amount to ask for and how to explain it. So, let’s have a look at what amount can reasonably be raised for funding self-publishing a book.

Other than actually writing the book, which is done at the authors’ expense, some crucial steps are needed before putting any book, whether self-published or not, on the shelves.

First and foremost, there is no way to stress that enough, since skipping that steps is what gives a bad name to self-published books, your book has to be professionally edited !

Lack of editing leads to bad reviews and will sink your book faster than you can glance at the cover.
Yet, hiring an editor is costly, and not all authors can afford to pay for editing out of pocket.

Let’s have a look at editing rates as advertized by the Editorial Freelancers Association.
For simple proofreading, the recommended rate is $30-$35 per hour with an estimated editing speed of 9 to 13 pages per hour.
Yet, proofreading only will just eliminate the spelling, grammar and punctuation errors, and do nothing to spot narrative mistakes such as inconsistencies and factual mistakes or stylistic weaknesses.
So, ideally, your book should be line edited. Line editing rates jump to $40-$60 an hour while the speed slows to 1 to 6 pages per hour.

Let’s have a look at the cost for editing a 250 pages manuscript,

Average cost for proof reading would be (250 pages/11.5 pages per hour) X $32.5 = 21.74 hours X $32.5 = $706.55
Average cost for line editing would be (250 pages/3 pages per hour) X $50 = 63.35 hours X $50 = $3167.5

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Then, your book needs a cover. Costs for book cover vary from $0 if you do it yourself to $5000 if you hire an up-market book cover designer.

Writers who double up as graphic designers do exist, but they are the exception rather than the rule, so most writers would benefit from hiring a designer for their book cover, yet paying top dollar is no guarantee of getting top book cover, so budgeting for book cover should aim at $500 to $1000 max.

Adding marginal costs such as book formatting (around $100) and some basic membership to SaaS services to help marketing the book on social media networks and SEO services, a reasonable cash request for funding self-publishing a book should be around $5000.

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8 comments on “How to fund self-publishing your book? How much do you need to self-publish your book?”

  1. Stephen Tiano on said:

    I’m a freelance book designer. Let me own up to my vested interest up-front.

    I imagine $3,000 to $5,000 is in the ballpark for an ebook. For print, however, not so much. For print–if you’re looking to produce a book that competes with the look of traditionally published books and encourage potential readers to part with their hard-earned money–you’ll want more than just a “formatter.” You’ll want a book designer for the interior, not just the cover (the latter meaning, by the way, in order of the way it prints on a single sheet: the back, the spine, the front cover).

    I’m not a great proponent of crowdfunding for self-publishers. I believe a self-publishing author ought to have financial skin in the game. You’re going into business when you publish, even if only one time for a single book. This is America. Anyone can go into business. No one is guaranteed a profit. And I don’t think anyone should look for others to take the financial risk for them.

    More importantly, however, is to create a book that doesn’t immediately ring out: “Self-published!” Treating self-publishing simply as an opportunity to nickel-and-dime expenses brings back the sense that self-publishing is vanity publishing for books that aren’t good enough to hook “real” publishers. It’s a mistake to encourage that approach.

  2. Lorna Dounaeva on said:

    I’m another cheapskate. My first novel, FRY, comes out on Amazon in March and while I’ve paid for a professional cover, I am doing the editing myself. Having said that, my book will have passed under a lot of eyes and any number of proofreads before its launch.

  3. Celise Winters on said:

    If any author is interested, I offer editing services at an affordable cost.
    For 250 pages, I charge $90 dollars for proof reading and $135 for in-depth services.
    Also for promtions, there are great book touring sites out there. In fact, I happen to have a book touring blog, Enchanting Book Tours. We offer free tours.
    Any authors who are interested feel free to check it out.
    Editing service: http://incandescentenchantments.blogspot.com/p/editing-services.html
    Book Tours: http://enchantingbooktours.blogspot.com

  4. Frederick Anderson on said:

    This site is headed ‘Publishing is an adventure’ – the problem for me is the price I have to put on ‘adventure’. For me – I’m not Jason; I don’t need a boat and lots of Argonauts – the answer should be nil. I have no mythical monsters to slay (except possibly Smashwords) and I have time and dedication enough (I care enough) to see that the work I publish is at least readable. My cover designs might not be perfect and by the same token I am sure my MSS are not, but the same can be said of most professionally edited work. I have never, as far as I recall, found a fault-free book, even in some classical literature that has been the rounds many, many times.

    A reminder I am sure has been made a million times before: if your work is good enough it will find publication and you won’t have to pay for it: that’s the wrong way up. The publisher should pay you. If you aren’t good enough, accept it? Don’t give up writing, because it is your catharsis, but some of us just have to smile and bear our obscurity with a glad heart.

    • Susan Wenger on said:

      Sometimes traditional publishers reject your book because it isn’t good enough. Sometimes they reject your book because they think it doesn’t have a big enough audience to make it worth their while. The challenge for any writer is to make their work good enough, regardless of how they’re publishing.

      Along those lines, hiring a professional editor isn’t just about making a manuscript free of typos. (Or greatly reducing the typos — you’re right, no editor is perfect.) It’s about polishing the writing. Finding continuity errors, or repetition, or any number of other things that writers can’t find on their own, no matter how much they care, because they’re too close to the work.

  5. John Chapman on said:

    Ouch!

    I guess my wife, Shelia and I, are cheapskates and breaking the rules
    then because we self—edit AND produce the covers ourselves.

    Having said that our books are put through a rigorous proofreading and
    editing process. Three different people read them, looking for typos
    and grammar mistakes. In addition we check our text with grammarly.com (often ignoring it’s suggestions since we know better than a computer). We argue for hours over the exact tense to use and whether to use UK or American spelling. (Shelia is from the US and I’m from the UK.) We record all events in a spreadsheet timeline and check to make sure we don’t cross the Atlantic at an impossible speed or have a meal at 3:00am (I really hate time zones!).

    Having produced a proof from our draft, we’ll get two proofs printed
    by CreateSpace and generate an ebook using HTML, Calibre, and Sigil.
    At this stage we’ll use the cover we make for CreateSpace to produce
    the ebook cover. (Did I mention I’ve spent years creating images in
    Photoshop and producing websites?)

    Once we’ve got the proofs – back to proofreading, both the printed
    copy and ebock. Once I’m happy with that I’ll then make a Smashwords
    ebook so that I can submit to iBooks and others. Each book will have
    been read at least five times by three different people in two
    continents.

    The time—scale for all this? Well we have book 8 in our ‘A Vested
    Interest’ series written and expect to make it available early
    December. I know there will still be mistakes in it but then, since I
    started doing this in 2007, I have not read a single book which is
    perfect. It’s a LOT of work. Maybe those prices are not such a bad
    deal!

  6. Lynnette Labelle on said:

    I’m a freelance editor and charge per word, except for writing coaching or special services like query letter critiques or writing classes. I offer a variety of services such as several proofreading packages (line editing), substantive/big picture editing, and developmental copyediting, a combination of proofreading and substantive editing. A 250 pages book would normally be 62,500 words (calculated at 250 words/page). My full range for this length of book would be $626-$2,500, usually falling in the $1,250-$1,875 range (since most of my clients prefer the substantive/big picture editing or developmental copyediting). So, I agree with Rick. The prices quoted here are a little high.

    Lynnette Labelle
    http://www.labelleseditorialservices.com

  7. Rick G on said:

    Many freelance editors charge by the word, not by the hour. A good freelancer (note: always do your research, ask for samples, references etc) can be a fraction of the cost you mention above. Likewise on the cover. If one is smart, does their due diligence, etc one should never have to pay more than your minimum budget above ($500) for a highly professional cover.

    Personally I am not a fan of supporting crowd sourcing for the purposes of book writing. That being said, I typically consider no more than $3k to be a reasonable amount. I probably would not consider helping to find a book at the price you mentioned above ($5k).

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