What it actually costs to publish a book

The honest answer is between nothing and about twenty thousand dollars, which is useless, so here is the breakdown instead. These are the market rates we see quoted across the industry, not our prices. Ours are on the packages page.

Editing

Editing is three different jobs that are often sold as one word, which is where a lot of confusion about price comes from. A developmental edit looks at structure and argument and asks whether the book works at all. A line edit works on sentences. A proofread catches errors. A quote for "editing" that does not say which of the three you are buying is not a quote.

• Developmental edit: $1,200 to $4,000 for a typical non fiction book

• ---

  Line edit: $0.02 to $0.05 a word, so $1,000 to $2,500 on a 50,000 word book

• ---

  Proofread: $500 to $1,200

A finished draft that has never been read by an editor usually needs all three. A book that has been through a good developmental edit sometimes needs only the last two.

Cover design

Between $300 and $2,500. The gap is mostly about whether you are getting a template with your title typed into it or a designer who reads the book. The thing worth paying for is a cover that works as a thumbnail on a phone, because that is the size at which almost every buying decision is made.

Interior layout

$300 to $1,200 for a text only book. More if you have photographs, tables or a fold out map. You need it set twice, once for print at a fixed page size and once reflowed for ebook, and a quote should say whether both are included.

ISBNs

In the United States, $125 for one from Bowker or $295 for ten, which is why nobody sensible buys one. Each format needs its own, so a paperback, a hardback and an ebook are three numbers. In the UK, Canada and several other countries they are free or cheap from the national agency.

Printing

Print on demand costs you nothing up front. The printer takes its cost out of each sale, usually $3 to $6 for a paperback, and you keep the rest after the retailer’s share. Ordering author copies costs roughly the same per book plus shipping.

Marketing

This is the line most first time authors leave out entirely, and it is the reason for most of the books that sell nine copies. A launch that reaches strangers needs somewhere between $500 and $5,000 of advertising spend plus somebody to run it. A book with no reviews, no email list and no chosen categories will not be shown to anyone by Amazon, because Amazon shows a book to strangers only once it is already selling.

Ghostwriting, if you are not writing it

$15,000 to $60,000 at agency rates for a full length book, less through a publishing house that bundles it. This is the single biggest variable and the reason quotes range so widely: a company quoting $2,500 is not writing your book, and a company quoting $18,000 probably is.

The three that arrive late

• Revisions beyond the included rounds, often billed hourly and rarely mentioned up front. Ask how many are included and what the rate is after that.

• ---

  Distribution setup fees, charged by some companies for uploading your files to accounts you could open yourself for nothing.

• ---

  Ongoing management. Ask what happens after launch and whether it costs more. For a lot of companies the answer is silence, and for others it is a monthly retainer nobody mentioned.

Add the middle of every range above and a self published non fiction book done properly lands somewhere around $6,000 to $9,000 without ghostwriting, and $20,000 to $30,000 with it, bought piece by piece. Packages exist because those combinations repeat and buying them together is cheaper than buying them one at a time.