It’s gotten increasingly easy over the past decade to self-publish a book. Before the rise of Amazon to prominence in the bookselling market, and later Amazon’s Kindle store, the vast majority of authors either published through a formal publishing company or not at all. Authors were at the mercy of what publishing companies deemed as worthy material.
Well, times have changed. It now makes almost no sense for most authors to even bother with a publishing company, especially small, independent authors just starting out. Most published authors only get about $1 per copy on books sold. And that’s on a book that retails at $20 or so. That’s a tough sell. Can’t tell you the last time I paid that much for a book.
Most of the books I buy cost less than a Quarter Pounder. As a self-published author, keeping 70% of the revenue to yourself, you can charge as little as $2.99 for your book on Kindle and pretty much kill it. At that price, you can compete with the big publishing companies selling books in the same niche for $9.99 or higher. I had one book debut right alongside Jillian Michaels, that psycho workout diet bitch from TV and all her formally-published glory. Little ol’ self-published me!
Traditional self-published hard copy books are also done in a different way these days. You used to have to pay thousands of dollars to have a printing done on your books. Talk about a leap of faith! Then you had to try to sell all those books to make a profit, mailing out each copy for each order. No wonder people used to publish through publishing companies! Post office? Yuck!
Now, with companies like Createspace, you can get books printed one at a time when they are ordered, and the books are sent out by those companies. All you have to do is watch your bank account grow—once you’ve sent them the manuscript and book cover design of course. No major expenditure or horrifying up-front costs.
Anyway, you may not become a millionaire from self-publishing your book. But you are probably more likely to make $10,000 from a self-published book than you are $1 from a published book, because getting published isn’t easy. And the process is very obnoxious and time-consuming. In today’s instant-publishing world, you could’ve put out three books in the time it would probably take you just to secure one, decent publishing contract.
To self-publish a book, all you have to do is…
- Write it
- Revise/Edit it
- Format it for eBook (MOBI, EPUB, PDF)
- Format it for paperback/print on demand
- Record it (if making an audiobook, which I highly recommend)
- Master it (if making an audiobook)
- Create accounts at various retailers (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Kobo, Createspace, ACX, etc.)
- Pick your title
- Get a cover designed or do it yourself
- Write your book description
- Pick categories to list your book in
- Upload your manuscript/audiobook recording
That’s it. And there are many companies that will help you through this process so that all you have to do is produce a manuscript. That’s what we do here at Archangel Ink to help authors focus more of their time on their craft and less of their time on the crap. Prices start at less than $1,000 depending on book length and services needed. To find out more about us, go to our HOME PAGE and watch the introductory video, then send us your contact information to get started.
Matt Stone is a successful self-published author of more than 15 books and co-founder of Archangel Ink. When he’s not writing, he spends most of his time helping independent authors distribute, market, and successfully sell their books.