£5,423

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This is not a click bait article where I ask a question only to bury the answer in a mountain of text. That’s no use to anyone and it’s certainly not the type of practice I encourage on my website.

So what does £5,423 get you? A lot, but not enough. Before I break down the cost, I want to talk about that figure a little more. Firstly, The Keeper of Portals was published in 2017, with the costs incurred during 2016. However, the GDP of the UK has shrunk since 2017 ($3.035 trillion in 2017 and $2.81 trillion in 2020 – source https://data.worldbank.org) so these prices are broadly indicative of self-publishing today.

Can you self-publish a book for less?

Yes!

In fact, you can self-publish a book for a hell of a lot less – virtually nothing if you use Kindle Direct Publishing. The problem with this is that your book is likely to be a piece of crap for the following reasons:

• Not enough editing (if any)
• Shit cover
• No marketing

The good news is, because you haven’t paid to market your book, no one will know it exists and therefore won’t know it’s crap. So, every cloud…

So how much should you spend?

As much as you can afford!

The key thing to consider is: How much would a traditional publishing house spend on your book if they had taken it on? The internet has no clear answer to this, but looking around, figures of between £25,000 and £100,000 seem reasonable, though this will be much higher for famous authors. This is a lot of money and it’s unlikely any individual will spend this much on self-publishing their work, no matter how good it is.

Also, £100,000 is an insane amount of money. What on earth are the spending it on?

MARKETING!

This is where I fell down with The Keeper of Portals. I spent very little on marketing and what I did spend didn’t go very far. For many of the other costs, the price difference between self-publishing and traditional publishing are likely to be the same (editing, cover design, etc.). If you spend your money wisely, there is no reason why your self-published book can’t have the look and feel of a traditionally published book. Crucially, I think this is what all self-published authors should aim for, to have someone pick up their book in a shop or library and for that person to have no idea the book is self-published. Sadly, this doesn’t always happen, and the main reason for this is that people don’t spend enough money publishing their books.

What if you can’t afford to self-publish properly?

I couldn’t! I had a young child and a second on the way when going through the publication process for The Keeper of Portals and there was no way I could afford £5k! Fortunately, I have a supportive family who were willing to give me the money I needed to publish my book. I won’t go into detail here whether that’s a good route or not, but it worked for me. The key thing to remember if you can’t afford to publish your book is that you don’t want to do your book a disservice and publish it on the cheap. It will be five years between The Keeper of Portals and my next book and that’s because I needed the time to save the money (having decided that I wanted to finance the next one on my own). If you have a great story but cut corners on editing or cover design, you’ll only hate yourself for it in the long run. Wait until you can afford to do you book the justice it deserves – your story will thank you!

PRICE breakdown

So what did I spend my £5,423 on? For reference, The Keeper of Portals is 90,590 words and 347 pages. As there is a correlation between book length and cost, these numbers should be borne in mind.

Editing – £1271
Cody edit: £650
Proof read: £486
Submission review: £135

Publishing – £2091
Pre-press: £700
Printing (500 copies): £1391
Cover: Free (a friend made it)

Distribution – £300
Overseas distribution: £120
Star representation: £180

Marketing – £1719
Sales representation: £420
Marketing package: £565
Facebook advert: £20
ebook and extended marketing: £714

Misc expenses – £42
Shipping: £42

This chart is wrong. At least half of the cost should be on marketing, but I’m aware that’s another minefield as there are many companies willing to take a hefty slice of the pie but deliver little in the way of results. I also skimped on the editing, but will cover this in more detail in a separate blog.

I’m now publishing my second book, The Archivist, and will blog on the progress of that, the costs involved and what appears to work, along with what isn’t working. I expect my pie chart of costs will look different. It will be interesting to see how it differs to the chart above and the effect that has on book sales. I will be sure to share that when the time comes.

If you’d like to see what £5,423 gets you, feel free to buy The Keeper of Portals.

VSN