Chris A. Baird | July 31, 2020
How Much Does Self Publishing On Amazon Cost?

Let me guess, you're new in self-publishing and you're wondering how much does self publishing on Amazon cost? Well, check out below to find out how much it really cost.

Today's question has three answers. The third answer is a secret as to why free can be very very expensive for you. Now, let's get into it.

The question that was sent in today was, how much does self publishing on Amazon cost? Now, this is a great question. You're considering maybe you should go with Amazon to self-publish the book that you've written.

That's a reasonable question but we want to know how much is it going to cost us. Is it going to be free? Is it going to cost us hundreds of dollars?

What exactly is the price so that we can decide if this is the right choice for us. Maybe you haven't even started writing your book. You're wondering, "Wait is this going to be way too expensive if I do write the book and then try to put it on Amazon?".

Maybe you can't afford to put it out there. Now, this is a very very common question. Anybody who's getting started needs to figure it out with any hobby or work or whatever it might be.

How much is something going to cost? Before we get into the answers, check out my free Self-Publishing Secrets Checklist that will help you get started on your self-publishing journey.

So the question then is, how much does self publishing on Amazon cost? Well let me start, when I first began, I went through several books, courses, YouTube videos, and podcasts. I had friends and family members involved with self-publishing.

So when I first started, I was amazed to discover that you could start self-publishing for free. If you really wanted to, that was an option.

But what was clear to me, in some of these books that I was reading was that if you go that route your cover is not going to be very good and your description too.

All these other things such as the formatting of your book. If people complain and don't like the way that the book structure set looks like, then they're going to give you one-star reviews.

That's going to prevent you from making sales. At the same time, if everything is super fancy then it's going to draw more readers. So, when they see the cover, they're going to be more tempted to go about reading the description.

Check out this related article: How To Self Publish With Kindle?

They may be purchasing the book and giving a positive review. I could see that there began to be a little bit of a difference. When I first started, I was on a shoestring.

I had no money dedicated to this. I was just simply using Word and trying to figure out ways to do my covers.

I try to do everything myself. And I discovered that it is possible. It's just that it was costing me a bit of money.

So I've over time moved and found a whole series of tools. Because I'm continually asked, what tools are you using? What are you using to put your books together at a very reasonable price?

These tools are specifically designed to get us to our goal which is getting our books out. Getting them to sell and that was a little bit of where I came from. Starting from absolutely no money.

Everything Is Free

Even you would just make it. I make a dollar or two from a sale and be thinking about how can I reinvest this money in terms of making me four dollars for the two dollars I invested.

In the early days, where you were just so excited to get a sale of your book a day. And that was something I found very exciting.

So how much does self publishing on Amazon cost? Let's get into the answers. The first thing is it's free, that's right.

You sign up for an account. You can write your book in Word or another format using OpenOffice. Or one of these other free word processing programs.

You can let Amazon help you make your cover for free. They have a built-in cover creator program that you can use. These are low-quality covers but it still gives you it.

Your manuscript when it is sent in, the table of contents won't work but at least gets it out on Kindle. You can put it as a PDF and upload it.

You can make your print version as well. You still would need to be able to do the cover. Take your cover from your Kindle and move it over into your print version.

Amazon will supply all of the ISBN numbers so you don't have to worry about that. As compared to if you went with Ingram Spark or something. Ingram Spark, for example, you have to pay up to $150 to get an ISBN number.

That can be very very pricey. So you're going to want to think long and hard before you go about putting your books over there. If you're going the free route this is something that's important to consider.

But on Amazon, no price for the ISBN because they use their own. It'll show up as their publishing, not their publishing company. It will show that it's associated with them.

Check out this related article: Is Self Publishing Amazon Kindle Worth It?

However, that doesn't mean they own the rights. You still control the rights to it and some people say, "Oh, but then it will show Amazon in my book cover when a person looks up the ISBN".

The average person doesn't even know what an ISBN is. There's no need to consider that. It's not going to impact your sales, the one who owns the ISBN.

In the long run, if you're putting books of different formats out there through other publishing companies, then you're going to need to do that. So far so good right?

Everything's free and that brings us to our secret answer of the day. It is that if you want to make real money you will need to invest in the tools. To ensure your books attract readers and give them the best experience possible.

That means that starting right from the beginning, your cover is the most important. Your title is the most important. And making sure that you're publishing books and genres people even want to read.

I use Kindle Spy as you to figure that part out. That's the cheapest tool I found. To show me how many sales are being made on the books on particular keywords on Amazon currently.

Then this is the next question you have to answer yourself. You're going to need to have a cover. I use Fiverr and a fantastic cover designer.

That is the designer that I use for my covers. She does an amazing job, puts together fantastic covers. At a price I pay for a couple of upgrades but generally, it's $20 per cover.

Tricks To Get More Sales

It's very very cheap, it used to be only $6 but now, it's $10. But I need the premium photo and she charges a little. She's raised the rates because she's just that good.

Then, you're going to need a book description. I do that myself. I figured out different tricks to get the books to sell using other best-selling covers and best-selling descriptions.

Then you're going to need to format the book. I use a tool called Jutoh to do that which costs I think $30 to $40 or something like that. It is the tool I use to do the formatting.

That will then work for your Kindle book, your EPUB book, and which you might use on Smashwords. If you go wide distribution and both your hardback and your Kindle Print and your IngramSpark.

All of those are automatically done once you put it into Jutoh. Then you have that, you pull your cover right into that tool. It just puts it all together and makes a very very easy experience.

You'll get a table of contents that's clickable your audience isn't going to complain. I remember when I used Fiverr originally to pay somebody to do the formatting for me and they sent me a format.

That if you put it into the night time mode, you couldn't read any of the text. Because the text was black and blue. They permanently chose those colors.

As opposed to having the correct settings which Jutoh will automatically do for you. Those are some of the tools that I used. Now that I've been doing it for years.

I did use other tools like Pro Writing Aid. I've quit using that because I found Grammarly's free. You don't need to pay for additional money to do that.

They have tools that will do your cover creation and thing or cover your descriptions. But I found that I could pretty much do the descriptions myself. You can do it in HTML as well very easily, there are free online websites to do that.

The final thing is once our book is finally produced, then we're going to want to put out the ads against it on Amazon. That's where I would use then Publisher Rocket.

It will help you find the correct keywords. To make sure the ads for your book are getting in front of the eyes of people. Those who are looking for exactly your kind of book.

Some of the keywords are amazing. They're words, phrases, and names I'm not even familiar with who these people are. But they convert well when you put them into the ads platform for Amazon.

That's, for the most part, the complete collection of the tools that I use. But how much does self publishing on Amazon cost? Why don't you tell me what have you found?

Check out this related article: How Much Does Self Publishing Cost?

Have you found a way to do it cheaper or a way that's maybe more expensive? I'd be very interested to hear what exactly you have found is the cost that you use?

Maybe you found some tools that are better than the ones that I'm using. I'm always looking for new tools that are either cheaper or better than the existing ones.

Because the more money that comes in makes my ability to invest in even more books. Now, I would be interested. Just leave your comments below and check out my other blogs and videos that will help answer your self-publishing questions.

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