How much should you pay to get your book published?

[Justin Nemo]

Another thorny subject no doubt and one that has been thrashed out in these forums before. I read somewhere recently that new authors should expect to pay at least $25,000 to get their new book published and onto the market. What is your experience?

[dadioflex]

But a flying unicorn (pegacorn) costs almost twice that. I'm not sure where you're getting your figures from but if new authors aren't going to invest in flying unicorns they're not going to be taken seriously.

They may as well spend nothing at all.

[DrNefario]

I don't think I'd be able to spend $25,000 if I tried. Maybe if I started my own bookstore to sell it in.

For an ebook there's no need to pay anything, and you could have a nice POD paperback with an ISBN for sale on Amazon for a few hundred. Even bringing in professionals for editing, cover design, etc, isn't going to come anywhere near $25k, is it?

On the other hand, if someone gave me $25,000 I might be able to devote more time and effort to getting my current book out.

[Redcard]

You should pay zilch to get your book onto the market and published. Money flows TO THE AUTHOR, not the reverse.

Now, some start up fees.. or if you want to personally buy an inventory of your books for personal sales at conventions or local bookstores, or through a website.. okay. But you should NOT be paying to simply get your book published in this day and age.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Justin Nemo

Another thorny subject no doubt and one that has been thrashed out in these forums before. I read somewhere recently that new authors should expect to pay at least $25,000 to get their new book published and onto the market. What is your experience?

$25,000! Wow. Someone's being taken for a ride.

You should be paying nothing if a commercial publisher wants to publish your book. Indeed, you should be getting paid.

If you want to publish your book yourself, you might want to pay someone for to do quality layout and cover design and/or ebook production. But that would come to nowhere near $25,000. Think one eighth that.

Of course, self-publishing won't get your book into bookstores, but you can get a PoD distributed through Amazon, and ebook distributed at Amazon, Apple, B&N, etc. And even paying someone to do all that should be relatively inexpensive.

$25,000! Good grief.

[teh603]

My first thought was that someone's been taken by the old vanity self-publishing scam.

[Justin Nemo]

This was a thread I was following on Linked in. Although some of those guys over there don't know their asp from their elba.

[howyoudoin]

Originally Posted by teh603

My first thought was that someone's been taken by the old vanity self-publishing scam.

Yeah, that's my thinking too. Surely if a publisher deems a book worth being published, it should be him, and not the author undertaking the risk and initial outlay on getting it out there.

[EileenG]

Occasionally, I'll write for free, because it's for a charity or something. But apart from that, I expect to be paid when I write. I never pay to write.

[anamardoll]

I keep meaning to write a post on how much I spent on my book. I'll crib here, but these numbers are guesstimates.

For a 60k word novel, I spent:

• $100 - Front Cover
• $100 - Back Cover
• $250 - Character Sketches
• $500 - Audio Book Narration
• $250 - Editing
• $75 - Smashwords Formatting
• $300 - CreateSpace (paper edition) Formatting
• $250 - 10 ISBNs
• $35 - Copyright Registration

And... that was pretty much it. Sundry expenses for tools like Scrivener ($50, I think). Most of those things can be avoided entirely. Front Cover and Editing are the only things you cannot do without, imho.

[Justin Nemo]

God I wish I was your accountant!! What about conversions to mobi, epub etc, do you get someone to do that or is that included in Smashwords?

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by Justin Nemo

God I wish I was your accountant!! What about conversions to mobi, epub etc, do you get someone to do that or is that included in Smashwords?

I do my work in Scrivener (which I think I got for $25 with a NaNo coupon) which has ePUB as an output. I use Sigil (free) to tweak the final version until I'm happy with it -- then I upload that ePUB to B&N and GoodReads. (Prior to Scrivener, I wrote in Sigil directly.)

I use Calibre (free) to convert the ePUB to mobi -- that goes up on Amazon.

The Smashwords conversion is a dead-end as far as I'm concerned -- I personally do not like the Meatgrinder conversion process.

[Justin Nemo]

I've recently started to tweak my epubs with Sigil, but as much as I love Calibre, I always seem to have some formatting problems when I convert it to mobi. Ah the joys of the writing art.

Thanks for the info.

[altworld]

To be totally honest the costs to get your work published and to market it do incur a little monetary expenditure, but no where near $25K... Maybe a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of that...

I have noticed from the three groups I joined on Linkedin that it is that last domain of vanity press marketers and is full of people that have been ripped off by them. The new wave of Indies and our DIY approach has a lot of them unsettled.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by altworld

To be totally honest the costs to get your work published and to market it do incur a little monetary expenditure, but no where near $25K... Maybe a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of that...

Perhaps it depends what value you place on your own time? If you spend a lot of time marketing, and you place a monetary value on that time, it could add up to a not-inconsiderable sum.