What Does It Cost to Self Publish My Book?
For those of you in the under 40 set, this is an allusion to the Shirley Temple movie Stand Up and Cheer. As a child, my favorite pastime was to watch and watch again and watch some more Shirley Temple black and white movies. For me, Shirley Temple embodied optimism, that pick-yourself-up-and-dust-off-your-dotted-swiss-voile-and-shake-out-your-petticoats mentality. One of my most treasured Christmas presents was a petticoat that Santa brought. I entered the room filled with anticipation and there it was–standing by itself in a corner. It was that stiff.
So, with stiff optimism and as promised, I’m unveiling my version of the self publishing budget. This is what I’m planning to spend to bring Moonlight Dancer to clamoring fans. (Okay, as of this writing, few fans are actually clamoring, but as Raising Hope creative forces Garcia and Greene claim, “If you stop dreaming, you’re just sleeping.”)
PUBLISHING BUDGET FOR MOONLIGHT DANCER
Bowker widget 60
Business license 25
Copyright 65
Cover artwork 150
Domain purchase 10
Fictitious business name 40
FBN public notice 60
ISBN 250
Kindle formatting 29
Research materials 150
Small Publishers Association membership 89
Web hosting 84
TOTAL 1012
As you can see, self publishing is not for the squeamish. Hence, my reliance on Shirley Temple to see me through.
Have I left anything out? What does your self-publishing budget look like?
4 thoughts on “What Does It Cost to Self Publish My Book?”
Deb, take a look at BlueHost. They are a great webhosting company (I’ve been with them for years and have never had an issue), for $6.95/year (I think this is for 2 years, maybe 3) you can host as many domains on there as you like. They only limit bandwidth, and unless you go uber viral and start streaming video from your site your not likely to exeed the limits. This gives you the ability to expand as you publish – a main author site and maybe a linked but unique site for each book.
$150 for cover art actually seems a little low to me, but admittendly, I have not researched exhaustively.
Hi Kristy,
Thanks for your comments. I will pass along your web hosting info to my web designer. She gave me a cost figure, which I forgot, so I just pulled that one from the internet. But wow, $7 a year sounds pretty incredible. I agree that the book cover price is low. I had originally heard $400 for that, but my husband challenged me to find a lower price. I found my cover designer at a website called http://www.thebookdesigner.com. They have a monthly contest of covers. My website should be going live the first part of May, and it will include the cover. If you like it, I will give you the artist’s name.
Oh, sorry, it’s $6.95/mo, a pretty significant typo! Sorry about that.
Kristy,
You made me laugh. There I was all ready to sign up for $7 a year! And it’s not even April Fool’s Day…Ha ha.