Join me as I go through the costs of publishing my three books The Keeper of Portals (2017), The Archivist (2022) and The Girl Who Sold Time (2025). These costs will cover everything required to go from a finished, but unedited draft, all the way to the final book.
What is not included are any post-publication costs, e.g. editorial reviews or marketings. I will cover these in a separate blog.
TL;DR
- Editing is the largest cost fraction
- The cheapest book was £3,227 and the most expensive was £6,132.80
- This is first time I’ve looked at these costs together – it is a little shocking
Let’s get started
I published all three of my books through Troubador, a UK-based self-publishing company. I will write a blog in the future about Troubador and my experiences with them, but as I have published multiple books through them, it’s safe to assume that I recommend them – though there are some things you need to watch out for.
I will present the costs for each book under the cost type: editing, production and printing, along with the RRP of each book.
As I used Troubador, I essentially paid extra for jobs that I could have done myself – though possibly badly. These costs come under production and include:
- Obtaining ISBN
- Typesetting
- Providing book metadata to Nielsen bookdata
A very important point
Before I delve too far into this blog, there is a really important point I need to make that I feel some authors do not want to think about.
If you want a high-quality self-published book that is indistinguishable from a traditionally published book, you have to spend money.
I cannot stress this enough. If you’re the type of author who wants to toss out a 12-book romantasy series exclusively through Amazon, then this blog is not for you. This blog is for high-quality self-publishing, not Amazon print on demand drivel.
Yes, I know I’m being overly critical, and possibly a little hurtful, but I cannot express to you how much I detest romantasy. It is derivative, unintelligent shite. The market is saturated with it and everything time I flick through TikTok or Instagram I feel like I am inundated with romantasy books as if it is the only genre that exists. I could write an entire blog about how much I hate romantasy, but that’s not for today.
We’re here to talk about money!
So, my point here is that all traditionally published books will have had money spent on them. And true, these “costs” will be through staff who work for the publisher – editor, typesetter, etc. – as opposed to what the self-published author will do, which is use various freelancers and/or a self-publishing company like Troubador. The positive note is that the amount of money a traditional publishing house will spend creating a book is not a huge number (at least not compared to the marketing budget) and a self-published author who is serious about their craft can likely afford to produce a book that is the same quality as a traditionally published book.
Don’t believe me? Here is a quote from a review I got from Blackburn library about my second book, The Archivist.
“I hadn’t got very far into it when I realised that I was really enjoying the story, and had to double check a couple of times that I hadn’t made a mistake and picked up a book from a mainstream publisher after all.”
That indiscriminability is what you are aiming for and, as I have said, the sad reality is that it will cost you.
Editing
There are lots of different types of editing and I will not go into them in detail in this post. What I will do is tell you the types of editing I had completed for each of my books and their costs – I’ll leave it to you to google the terms if you don’t know them.
| The Keeper of Portals (89,912 words) | The Archivist (102,360 words) | The Girl Who Sold Time (66,882 words) | |
| Editorial critique | £500 | £500 | |
| Line edit | £1,212 | £2,052.40 | |
| Copy edit | £650 | £1,058.40 | |
| Proof read | £486 | £806.40 | £680.40 |
| Total edit cost | £1,136 | £3,576.80 | £3,232.80 |
Without going into exhausting detail, here are a few valuable points you many want to consider when deciding where to spend your editing budget:
- Editorial critiques are highly valuable as they tell you where the weak spots are in your story. Get this done early in your drafting as you will likely need to re-write large sections of your manuscript based on their feedback
- After The Archivist, I realised that I did not need a line edit and a copy edit. The copy edit made very few changes to the story and was effectively a complete waste of money because all the issues had already been addressed by the line edit
- The editing costs will relate to the word count of your book because the more the words there are in manuscript, the more time it takes to read them all and find the errors – simple really
- The line edit for The Girl Who Sold Time was so expensive because I used Cornerstones, who charge by time, as opposed to quoting a fixed value at the outset. However, I would add that this was an excellent line edit, and I would recommend Cornerstones to other authors if it is something they can afford
- Proof reading is essential. So many self-published authors skip this set (and I suspect a good number skip all of the editing steps) and it really shows
Bottom line, you will give your story the best chance of success if you pay for multiple, professional editors to go through your manuscript and turn it into the best version of itself.
Production costs
These costs are essentially a bucket for everything that isn’t editing or printing. As I said above, this is the ISBN cost, typesetting and dealing with the book’s metadata. While it is possible to do this yourself, I would not recommend it – especially the typesetting. It is much easier to pay a publisher a reasonably small amount of money and check their work then doing it yourself.
The only cost you will have to pay if you are doing it yourself is for an (International Standard Book Number) ISBN. These are £93 (in 2025) from Nielsen.
| The Keeper of Portals | The Archivist | The Girl Who Sold Time | |
| Production cost | £700 | £775 | £800 |
This cost is essentially fixed by Troubador and is not related to the size of the book, with the increase in price relating mostly to inflation.
Printing costs
This is one of the areas where the self-published author is most heavily stung. Due to the small print runs most of us can afford, the cost per printed book tends to be high. It is for this reason that most self-published authors who print stock separately and then sell via Amazon will find that they make a loss per sale if they price their book competitively for their genre (e.g. £7.99 for a children’s book, not £12.99 – which I have seen some authors do).
The other thing that changes the cost of your book are enhancements. For The Archivist, I included UV varnish over the front cover and spine titles, and for The Girl Who Sold Time, there is silver foil on the front cover and spine titles, along with additional foil to add extra depth to the cover image. While these are not essential – nor do they show up well in pictures on the internet – they really add something special to the finished book and I recommend you look into these enhancements as a way to help your book stand out, even if it increases your printing costs.
| The Keeper of Portals | The Archivist | The Girl Who Sold Time | |
| Number of copies | 500 | 300 | 500 |
| Enhancement | N/A | UV varnish | Silver foil |
| Printing cost (no enhancement) | N/A | £841 | £1,668 |
| Printing cost per book (no enhancement) | N/A | £2.80 | £3.34 |
| Actual printing cost | £1,391 | £1,060 | £2,100 |
| Printing cost per book | £2.78 | £3.53 | £4.20 |
These are very high printing costs, and it is quite likely that cheaper options can be found if you are willing to shop around – especially if you look at printing your book outside of the UK.
Final costs
Let’s stick it all together and check out the total costs associated with creating each of my books.
| The Keeper of Portals (500 copies) | The Archivist (300 copies) | The Girl Who Sold Time (500 copies) | |
| Editing costs | £1,136 | £3,576.80 | £3,232.80 |
| Production costs | £700 | £775 | £800 |
| Printing costs | £1,391 | £1,060 | £2,100 |
| Total cost | £3,227 | £5,411.80 | £6,132.80 |
| Total cost (inflation adjusted) | £4,321.52 | £6,154.31 | £6,132.80 |
| RRP | £7.99 | £9.99 | £7.99 |
Jesus. When you see it all laid out like that, it’s pretty sobering.
Blog over. I need a drink.
VSN
