There are lots of really good, really long resources out there that can tell you how to self-publish a book, so in the interest of everyone’s time, I’m not going to rehash those. What I am going to do in this blog is tell you about my personal experience self-publishing two books, seven years apart from each other. I mention the timeline because services have changed in that time. What was once a no-brainer, no longer exists. I’m also going to give you some tips to test the waters before publishing your book if you’re feeling nervous (and that’s ok. It’s nerve-wracking to put yourself out there!). Since I want this to be more in-depth to add the most value, I’m breaking my rule of it being under a 5min read.
How to Find a Publishing Distributor
You’ve written a book and you’re ready to publish it. Congrats! Truly, that is a huge feat. Make sure you’ve either thoroughly edited it yourself or paid to have a professional edit it for you. Now, you’re ready to publish. But you don’t want to pay for a print run, then personally ship your books to everyone, you’re going to want a distributor.
You can choose distributors yourself, like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, who will print and ship your books as they’re ordered (called “print on demand”) but there are SO MANY OTHER book stores in the world, not to mention libraries. If you don’t go with an established distributor, you have to navigate all of that yourself.
That’s why for my second book, I chose to go through IngramSpark. For my first book, I used only Amazon, which I’ll talk more about below. This was my first time with Ingram Spark, and so far I personally have mixed reviews. On the one hand, they make both physically and ebook distribution to over 40,000 places as easy as a few click and only costs $50. That’s amazing. On the other, their customer service is difficult to get ahold of and after two weeks, my book still has no cover image on Barnes and Noble. There are PLENTY of other distribution companies out there, but in my research, this was the most straight-forward, widely used, and reasonably priced that I found.
All that this boils down to is that unless you want to do the hard work of getting your book into thousands of retailers worldwide (which almost isn’t even possible unless it’s your full-time job for a long time) then you need a distributor.
How to Make an Audiobook
For transparency, this is my first time making an audiobook. I chose to go with Amazon’s service acx.com. There are lots of options on here to get started, and you can even put out an audiobook for $0 if you want.
You can choose between two royalty models. One gives you 40% but you can only distribute through Amazon, Audible, and iTunes. The other is 25% and ACX will distribute it more widely for you.
Next you choose your narrator. There are two models for this too. With one you’ll pay upfront first and keep all of the royalties for yourself. With the other, you put up no money and split the royalties 50/50 with the narrator. So for example, if you choose the 40% royalty model, you’ll actually be getting 20% and the narrator will get 20%. If you choose the first option, ACX will tell you based on the page length about how long the audiobook will be. Then it will calculate your narrator’s price based on their hourly rate. This rate is what you’ll pay the narrator. With the second, you simply split the royalties. Because of that, I’ve heard it’s harder to get narrators to agree to the royalty sharing deal.
This is not the only option for audiobooks. Like with the distributor, you can do everything on your own and figure out how to distribute it. I have no experience with that though, so I’m not the best person to ask.
How to Self-Publish on a Budget
Generally, authors, and in particular self-published authors, are known for being the opposite of wealthy. But that shouldn’t stop you from producing your book! Here are some options for you at different price points.
Publish a book with $0
Believe it or not, you can do this with no money out of your pocket. I did. Here’s what you do:
Publish your book with Amazon and use their distribution model. They will give you an ISBN number so you don’t need to buy one for $100+. The catch is that you can only sell on Amazon with that ISBN. You’ll need to pay for one to publish anywhere else.
Make your cover using free images from Unsplash and format it using Canva. Both are free (though Canva does have a pay model if you want some fancier fonts).
Make your audiobook using ACX and choose the royalty share program.
There you go! Your ebook, paperback, hardback, and audiobook are on the largest book distributor in the world and you didn’t have to pay a penny!
Publish a book with $50
Publish your book using a distributor like IngramSpark. Their current pricing model offers both ebook and print books for $50. There were a few hidden fees when I did this, so have an extra $25 ready in case.
Quick caveat here is that I’m not budgeting for ISBN purchases with this $50 option. You’ll need to buy those even if you work with IngramSpark but they do offer discounts.
For the cover and formatting, use the same tips from the $0 budget option.
Publish a book with $150
If you have a little more to spend on your book, you can follow the tips from the two previous budget options but now you can add a giveaway! Goodreads is owned by Amazon and for $119, you can run a giveaway for 100 ebooks. Why would you do this? When people sign up for your giveaway, typically they will add your book in their “Want to read” shelf. This means that potentially hundreds of people will have your book on their shelf and you may get up to 100 reviews from the people who received your book. I can’t overstate enough that reviews are like gold in the self-publishing game. It’s really hard to sell an unknown book by an unknown author if other people haven’t taken a chance on it first.
Same caveat about the budget here, that it’s not accounting for the ISBN purchase.
Publish a book with $500
Wow! You are a baller. With the extra budget, you can sign up for Advanced Reader Copy sites like BookSirens and NetGalley. There’s no guarantee they’ll accept your book. Mine was rejected, but my friend’s debut book was accepted. It depends on the amount of books they have at any given time. But they don’t charge you unless you’re accepted so it’s worth a try.
At this pricepoint, you can also explore making your audiobook without the shared royalty option and keeping all future royalties for yourself. Narrators typically charge between $50-200/hr.
Final Thoughts
Self- publishing is really hard. And there’s always something more you can do, something you’ll learn, and something you wish you’d done but it’s too late now and you have to get over it. But money shouldn’t be the reason you don’t do it.
The world needs to hear your story, so get it out there!
If you’d like to hear more about my self-publishing journey and what I’ve learned, feel free to contact me and I’ll make it a future blog topic.
Hope this helps you aspiring writers out there!