Chris A. Baird | February 17, 2021
Self-Publish For Under $199!

You have written your book and you want to get it onto the market, but you've heard that it could cost thousands of dollars to get it there. Find out how you self-publish for under $199!

Today's topic has three answers that we're going to be looking at. And you're going to want to stick around because the third answer is a secret to how cheap I believe you can do self-publishing and still do it the right way.

So let's get into this. The question or topic for today is self-publish for under $199! The reason a person might ask this question is that you have a book as an author and you're looking to get it onto the market.

But you've heard that it could cost tens of thousands of dollars to get it onto the market. Some people choose to go with vanity publishers where they're continually telling "you have to pay this, you have to pay that".

There are all of these costs that you never saw coming at you. Maybe you end up with a huge pile of books in your garage that you never managed to sell that the publisher makes you buy a copy of.

It can be intimidating, the idea that maybe you can get your books sold for under $199 or can you self-publish for under $199?. And that is what we're going to discuss in today's blog. But before we get into the answers, check out my free Self-Publishing Checklist.

It will help you make sure you're not skipping any of the steps that you need to be following. If you wish to get your books onto the market easily and also make money on them. So let's get into it, a little bit from my own story.

When I first started, I started with no real budget for self-publishing. I was curious if it was possible to jump into this self-publishing game without spending much money or any money at all. So my very first step was that I read a book on how to self-publish.

And of course, I got this book for free. It was on a free promo. I grabbed this book and I began to realize that yes you actually can do it without having to pay so much money. I found a free way to convert my book, my Word document into a Mobi file.

Now you can do it with Smashwords, to get the Kindle file out that you'll need for your KDP self-publishing. Then the next step was I found a way to create a cover for free using a program called Canva.

On that website, you can just choose a Kindle cover book design, then grab some of their free covers. Or you can get your artwork and stuff from Pixabay.com. Put those onto the cover for the book you're going to sell.

The beauty of these websites is that they're giving you free artwork, free tools to put the cover together. You put your title and everything on there then you're good to go. I was amazed to see books selling doing just exactly the strategy.

Pay $20 Using Fiverr

Using the free covers that you get on Canva to put your books out onto the market with high-quality covers. That's the part that was so amazing to me. Then I wrote the description myself and did self-editing on the book.

The cost was absolutely nothing, I was able to do it for free. Not paying one single penny for the entire process. However, I did go back at a later point when I realized that I wasn't making as much money on this.

Investing in the tools and the necessary services to maximize the money that you're making off of your books, that was the key thing that I learned. So the initial cost for getting the book onto the market was absolutely nothing, it was free.

So even at $199 that was even a bit high. So self-publish for under $199! So the first one is you definitely should not do it for free because you're going to lose money in the long run on this one.

So if you have any cash at all, then you definitely should go this route. Jutoh is by far the best program I found on the market. In terms of making sure that your formatting is exactly spot-on correct.

This can be purchased for around $50 or even less one-time pay and then you've got it forever. It'll be used to produce your Kindle books, your Mobi files, and your EPUB books which you use Smash Words, Ingram Spark, or other sites. It will also be used to produce your paperback versions.

The table of contents is perfect for the PDF copies that you'll be using for your hardback. Your paperback copies on KDP Print, Ingram Spark, and the hardbacks are done on Lulu. But that's further down the line, it's one tool that gives you the ability to produce all of these specific ones that's $50.

You're going to pay $20 using Fiverr to get your cover done. Those are the ones that I use over and over again. I am always surprised at the quality of design and the quality of the books that come out and when I submit the books in, they go straight through.

Amazon doesn't reject my books based on the quality of in terms of the formatting in there. So that's a very key issue you're going to want to remember. The final thing is $70 is enough to get started with self-publishing.

Hire People On Upwork

But there's always a but with a secret answer. It's that you are going to want to do editing, I used Fiverr to do that. You are going to want to have a sales page copy and you can do it yourself.

But there's also some other options available for the sales copy. You can hire people on Upwork. You may want to have a web page which I would recommend using Bluehost.

An email list using Active Campaign to build up your readers as they read your book. So you can tell them about your new books and also get them to help you with the reviews on your books. And you're going to also run Amazon ads against it.

That should be a moneymaker for you assuming you've done the other stuff. You're going to need ISBN's if you're going to push onto a site like Ingram Spark. And finally keywords tool like KDspy.

One of the things I always like to do is change the tools that I use to find the absolute best tools to help you save money and time when you're doing it. I make the list below in the description of my Youtube videos. I put my affiliate links in there.

These are the tools that I use, I stand behind them. I don't know any of the people. I can't say with Jutoh, I've gone back and forth with the developer on that one.

Check out this related article: Are The Tools Too Difficult To Learn?

Because he's incredibly helpful with any issues or challenges I've had. He is just quickly able to answer and do give me some help with using the tool. But there haven't even been questions in the last several years.

Because once you figure out the basics of the tool, it just works fine. You can use it for every other project you have from that point on. Those are the keys to holding it and self-publish for under $199 or $70 if you'd like.

All in all, if you put all of these things together, you might be pushing $300 or $500 a book. It depends upon what you're looking at. But I would say at least $70 is a very reasonable investment to make for your self-published book.

And we're assuming you're writing it yourself. If you're not, well then you may have used a different service to do that. So that would be my recommendation to you on this particular one.

So, self-publish for under $199! Do you feel self-publishing is too expensive? If you do, write "yes" below in the comments. And if you don't feel it's too expensive, then write "no" below in the comments.

That will help me understand where you're coming from. So I can produce blogs and videos that will hit it right spot-on for your situation. So just let me know and check out my other blogs and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.

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