Budgeting for Self-Publishing
Authors should split their budget between book polishing services, marketing, and author platforms to maximize the potential of their book
The road to self-publishing is longer than any writer expects it to be.
This is due to the several pieces of the puzzle that make up self-publishing a book:
Finding a writing application to use (Word, Google Docs, Scrivener)
Researching the market for your genre (book cover, titles, fonts, keywords)
Finding alpha readers and beta readers to read over the finished product
Having your book edited
Deciding whether to design your cover or hire out
Learning how to format the book
Figuring out which book-selling platform you want to upload your book to
All the while marketing your book from the beginning
Yet numerous authors think that they need to pay thousands of dollars to produce a wonderful product.
What writers need to know about self-publishing from the beginning is that:
You need to learn the business side of publishing, the process side of publishing, and know the audience
You need to determine your skillset and where it lacks so you know what to hire for
Knowing these key pieces of information will help you determine your budget.
But first, let’s break them down.
Learning the Business Side of Publishing
As writers, we want to write our stories and share them with as many people as possible.
Period. That’s it. That’s the goal.
Yet, we tend to push aside the important fact that being an author is a business.
We need to market our products to our customers. We need to make sure that we are releasing quality products. And we need to ensure we are building a reputation that makes not only existing customers return, but attract new customers.
Admittedly, this does require a lot of work on our part.
However, if we want to continue a career in writing, this is what it takes.
So, to learn the business side of publishing, we want to learn:
How to price a book
How to conduct market and keyword research
How to build an author platform
How to obtain early reviews
How to spend your budget wisely
See The Writing Community Chat Shows interview with Jane Friedman for more information.
The Process Side of Publishing
Sometimes even sitting down to write on a regular basis can be a difficult goal to achieve.
However, what we need to do is begin to build a reusable process to publish a book. A process that walks us through deadlines, goals, and milestones from the start to after publication.
Let’s break down what makes up this process:
A Timeline
Without a guide to move you through every step of the process, authors can often feel lost.
Creating a timeline should be your first step in the process.
Decide when the first draft should be completed
Decide when alpha readers will get the manuscript and their deadline to read it
Decide when the editor should receive your manuscript
Decide when edits should be completed
Decide when beta readers receive copies and provide deadlines
Set reveal dates
Set a release date
Decide which platforms you are publishing to (Draft2Digital, Smashwords, Kobo, Google Play Books, Apple Books, Amazon, IngramSpark)
Create marketing materials
In addition to completing the timeline, a schedule should be formed to complete all of these.
Consider setting a sacred time each day or week just for writing. Dedicate a day to creating social media posts and marketing materials. Set aside time to complete the research needed for your book.
By making a schedule, you will feel less overwhelmed with ensuring all of these tasks get completed.
Development
The second portion of your process should be the part where the story is developing and gaining shape.
Writing/ Planning/ Outlining/ Editing — Writing a story takes planning and revisions to make it an enjoyable read. This part of the process can sometimes take months to years for some writers.
Research — An important part of the process that helps the story feel believable and rounded, research provides key details to the story. Without research being conducted, the story can fall flat or leave the reader feeling lost. For more, see Detailed Research Makes Your Writing Better.
Alpha readers, Editors, and Beta readers — An often overlooked aspect of the process, these three types of readers need to be used. Because if they aren’t the mistakes readers find can ruin their experience. For more, Authors need three types of readers to ensure a polished published book.
Each of these subsections of the development portion is crucial to forming a final product.
Platform Growth
One of the best things you can do for yourself as an author is to grow your author’s platform.
Develop a professional website: Be sure to keep this updated with your upcoming works and updates to your career. Even consider keeping up with a blog in order to keep visitors returning.
Create social media accounts: Using that schedule, consider scheduling social media posts ahead to allow you to focus on interacting with people on other days of the week. Also, be sure you have a uniform look across all the platforms so readers recognize and find you.
These are the two key ways that reviewers, bloggers, and readers are going to find you.
Knowing Your Audience
When publishing a book, we want to know what our audience is looking for, what will attract them, and what will make them purchase your book.
And by conducting market research, talking with readers in your genre, and gathering feedback, you are closer to understanding how to gain their attention.
How do you find this audience?
Social media is the best way for you to begin gathering information about your audience. Allowing you to find information such as:
Price points they are willing to pay
What descriptions will gather attention
What covers resonate well with them
Finding readers early on as you talk about your book
How to Use All of This Information to Establish A Budget
Now that we have covered the business side and process side of publishing as well as knowing your audience, how do we apply this information to our budget?
As I said earlier, knowing your skills and what you need to hire out for are key to knowing how much you need to spend.
We are going to break it down into three sections.
Book Polishing Services
This falls under the business side of the process because you want to release a quality product to your customers.
So, you may need to budget for:
Book Cover Design services (Range between $30 to $300)
Book Editing Services (Some editors charge $20 an hour, some charge per word, and some charge for the whole project)
Formatting (If you aren’t using Reedsy.com where you can format for free or do it on your own, $200-$300)
When figuring out what services you need to enlist, know that professional editing is the one piece you want to spend a healthy part of your budget on.
But it doesn’t have to be your whole budget or a whole lot.
This is where shopping around comes in handy. Tons of freelance websites such as Fiverr or Upwork have editors who work at cheaper prices. But know that you need to read the reviews, and it’s good to offer an extra $50 for them to do a sample edit for you for the first 1 to 3 chapters.
Some people fall into the trap of paying thousands of dollars for editing services, but I managed to find an editor on Upwork for just $250.
So it’s possible.
Marketing Costs
Ah, the beast known as marketing.
Marketing is a weak spot for thousands of authors because it is difficult to stay on top of trends in the market that relate to your book and convert the view of your marketing content into a purchase.
Here are some things you should know:
Partnering with book bloggers and reviewers will do more for your marketing than running advertisements
Creating marketing content for social media feeds will take longer to gain traction, but it’s free to post it as a social media post
Paying for advertisements and learning how they operate takes time and research. But it’s possible to achieve.
Marketing is still a weak spot for me and I’ve been at this for 10 years now.
Authors Platform Costs
Having an author’s platform is crucial to helping your audience find you, but it doesn’t come without a cost.
What should your author’s platform consist of?
Author Website
Social Media
Newsletter
An author website
An author’s website is wonderful to have because you can have all your information in one place.
But…it’s not in a place that is social. By this I mean, people need to go there on their own and leave where they already are. And this can sometimes be hard to get them to do.
So give them reasons to come back.
Post regular blogs (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly)
Keep it updated with your books, appearances, and more
Have exclusive content they can get only there
Provide access to your newsletter there
Now, a website is going to have costs to consider.
Cost to register a domain name (Google charges $12 a year, Squarespace charges $20)
Hosting costs (this is online storage for all the items you have available on your author website, some places like Squarespace include this in your subscription plan, but places like Wix have a separate cost)
Professional Help/ Designing (you can design the site on your own, but if you are not tech savvy you may need someone to help with plug in’s on the site, display, or even creating a logo. So prices can vary.)
Time (It will take a considerable amount of time in the beginning to set up your Website)
The road to publishing can feel like you are climbing Mount Everest, but if you plan accordingly, it can be done well.
Remember to:
Research the market for your book
Learn the business side of publishing and the process side of publishing
Divide your budget costs between Book Polishing Services, Marketing, and Author Platform