- How much does it cost to self-published in 2020?
You're gonna find out in today's video, stay tuned.
(gentle music)
Hey, I'm Dale L. Roberts, a bestselling author
as well as a self-publishing advocate,
who wants to show you how to publish books that sell.
And if you want that too,
of course subscribe to this channel,
and also join me every Monday
at 12 p.m. Eastern daytime, at twitch.tv/selfpublish.
If you subscribe for free with the Amazon Prime membership,
you can also get a few freebies in the process.
This is the fifth part of the how to self-publish
a book series that is exclusively sponsored by Fiverr,
and if you want to,
go check out all of their wonderful services
in their new e-book and bookstore for folks just like you,
at dalelinks.com/fiverr.
That is F-I-V-E-R-R.
A full disclosure,
this is an expedited overview of everything,
so just so you know, I put together a book,
but that's a loose sense of the terms,
because it was a shorter manuscript.
And the reason why is,
I really just wanted to use this as an example.
So just know that if you've got a longer book,
a longer manuscript, it's gonna equal a longer process,
and it's going to of course,
equal more as an investment up front.
We started out with the research mode.
As a quick recap, what I did was I used a software
that's called Publisher Rocket,
to do all of the research for my keywords,
my competition, the categories and everything else.
It was nice that I came to the table knowing exactly
what I wanted to get produced for this specific project.
So, I was able to use Publisher Rocket
to kind of put all this together,
and it took less than an hour
for me to really research exactly what I wanted to.
And I found something I was pretty happy with,
and I'm very happy with now.
Publisher rocket is a one-time fee,
and it's a lifetime access for $97.
If you want to get access to that
I've got a link down inside the description down below.
Is it mandatory that you have Publisher Rocket
to do publishing?
No, not by any stretch
but I wanted to give you full disclosure,
as far as all of the costs involved
in putting this project together.
Then came writing the content.
So in my previous video about how to outline a book,
and writing on a busy schedule,
I told you that there are a couple of ways
that you can do it.
You can either do it yourself,
which means you write your own content.
That's free, and all you gotta do
is invest a little bit of time.
In my instance, I'm kind of strapped for time.
I really just don't have enough time
to put together a manuscript for this video series,
so it only made sense that I had a ghostwriter
work with me on this specific project.
Now again, this is a loose sense of the term book,
when I say that the manuscript
was gonna be about 5,000 words.
But I reached out to somebody on the Fiverr platform,
and they did the ghostwriting for me.
I told them exactly what I needed,
I handed off the outline, and had them do that.
It was about 5,000 words for $250,
but when I got the gig back she delivered 6,100 words.
Now, hang in there for a second,
I'm gonna tell you why this turned out
to be a bit of a detriment to me.
Because, sure it was great that I got an extra 1,100 words
at no extra cost,
but it was bad in that it increased the cost
of all the services thereafter.
So, know this, is when you're hiring out somebody
you may want to be very explicit about your word count,
and trying to honor that one, or give them at least a range.
This one I said I wanted 5,000.
I should have said up to 5,000 and nothing beyond it.
It took a total of about 10 days to complete,
and I was pretty happy with the manuscript.
She did a very good job.
Then comes editing and proofreading.
Okay, could you do this yourself, yes.
Should you do that, no.
And the reason is you're going to be blind
to a lot of mistakes you would otherwise catch.
And even if for instance you hire a ghostwriter,
and maybe they edited their own work,
it's still a good investment to reach out to somebody
other than that writer to edit that for you,
and to proofread it.
So that way it is as tight,
and as (hums) polished as possible
before you put it onto the market.
So for the editing services,
I went over and I ordered a basic gig for 10,000 words,
and it covered grammar and syntax review.
I intended to order the standard gig with all the above,
and an included feedback content rewriting
and structural editing.
I was in a rush to put together this video series,
and I just, you know, hastily went and ordered that.
I should have reached out to her in advance.
Thankfully that specific basic gig covered 10,000 words,
and all I had was 6,100,
so she was totally cool
with doing some of the content rewriting,
and giving me just a little bit more.
Now I can't promise
that she's going to do that same deal for you.
So the basic gig was about a $100.
Now, if I would have done the standard gig
it would have been $140.
But, woulda, coulda, shoulda,
I'm not gonna sweat it at this point.
It took about three days for her to turn this around,
and the nice thing it turned out to be really good timing,
despite my lack of communication in advance with her,
it just so happened to hit her inbox at the right time,
that she didn't have a lot of work
and she was able to handle the gig.
Then came the proofreading services.
Now why would I proofread after I've been editing?
Well, think of proofreading
like putting on that final coat of wax.
Now, I would recommend when it comes to editing,
that you go through a few rounds of editing
to make sure it's all clean.
But with it being such a short manuscript,
I handled the editing before I sent it off to the editor,
and then the editor went ahead sent it to me,
and I edit it again,
and then I sent it over to the proofreader.
Now, if you're strapped for time,
and you don't have the time to go through
and edit your stuff,
mind I recommend you might want to work into your budget
about two to three rounds of editing.
And so, for this specific gig,
since it was about 6,100 words, it ran me about $90.
If it was 5,000 it would have been $75.
So you can see how that first ghost writing gig
really kind of messed me over in some instances.
And the proofreading services took all of one day
to turn around, and she had some fantastic notes,
and I was able to really tweak and fine-tune
exactly what I had there.
Then came the interior formatting.
Okay, so we're gonna need to make sure we're putting
it together for e-book and print books.
So you're gonna wanna have both of those formatted.
I don't like to fuss around with this too much,
and especially being so busy, so I hired out again.
And so, I wanna find someone that's an all-in-one service,
someone who's gonna handle both of them,
so that way there is some type
of brand recognition from one to the next.
'Cause if I try to hire someone for the e-book,
and then another person for the print book,
and they're gonna probably give me two different products.
I'd rather have two that are very much the same.
So to format the print and e-book
I reached out to this gentleman in advance.
He was able to handle everything.
He charged $75,
and it took all of about four days to turn around.
And, here's the big kudos,
he didn't just put together the gig,
and just hand it over to me and say,
oh well go ahead and make sense of it if you can,
he actually gave instructions on what needs to be done
in order to publish it successfully.
And, I really liked that.
Now of course, I really didn't need that myself,
but if you're new to publishing
this is kind of a nice little hand-holding thing.
So he wanted to make sure that you were taken care of
after your gig was done with him.
So, by far my most favorite gig of all of them,
because of what he provided beyond his service.
Then came the cover design.
This was my most favorite part here,
I will tell you that if you have a hit book cover,
don't expect to make any sales.
So I wanted to make sure I wasn't pulling
any punches on this one.
I wanted to spend as much money on to this area as possible
so I had the best product I could,
because if it looks hit, and it seems hit,
and it just doesn't match the rest of the niche,
no one's gonna buy it.
And, so that's why I said, "Okay let's go for the goal,
"let's get the best of the best, the cream of the crop."
And this is why I chose a service
that's available through Fiverr called the Fiverr Pro.
And I wanted it to be, again, one-stop shop,
e-book and print book,
and eventually having an audio book cover done too.
I just wanted to cover the print and e-book for right now,
and then come back later and get the audio book.
For the cover, this was really nice,
this ran me about $280,
and there was a couple of service fees
that were put on top of this.
And I'm gonna talk about fees
when we go into the totals and such,
because I didn't cover that just yet.
But, it took about five days to complete.
I was blown away at what she send back.
Sometimes when I've worked with cover designers
there's been some type of volume back and forth,
but for this one it seemed like she understood
exactly what I was shooting for.
Okay, so I told you that there were some fees
that were involved.
Now let's go ahead and add everything together,
because publishing it is gonna be 100% free,
and I'm gonna share that in the very next video.
Stick around to the very end.
Fiverr worked with me, and they gave me credits in advance.
So if you have credits
as a seller of some sort inside Fiverr,
you don't need to pay for any type of fees.
Normally, you're charged $2 per gig that's ordered
for anything that's below $40,
but as you could kinda tell from each one of these gigs
it was definitely above $40,
and that actually's gonna be a 5% fee on each one of those.
Again, if you've got credits
you don't have to worry about fees.
So how much does it cost to self-publish altogether?
For the research,
that was $97 and it was a one-time fee.
It's optional, I would highly recommend
if you are getting into this business,
consider investing in it,
and especially if you plan
on doing multiple publications in due time.
Then came the ghostwriting, and that was about $250
for about 5,000 words.
Supposed to be 5,000 but ended up being 6,100
plus $12.50 for the service fee
for a total $262.50.
Then the editing was $100.
You add service fees on that,
that'll be $5 more for a total of $105.
Proofreading was about $90.
If you add the fee in it's $4.50
for a total of $94.50.
Formatting, was about $75
for both print book and e-book together,
with a service fee of $3.75
for a total of $78.75.
Book cover design,
was a little bit higher than all of the other services,
and I think really worth it,
and I'll be revealing in the next video.
It was $280, and and with the service fee
that would be $14 for a total of $294.
For the total cost of self-publishing this book,
it was about $931.75.
It was less grand.
Now a lot of you might be kinda getting some sticker shock,
and going (groans) maybe there's some services
that you could do yourself,
maybe you're a good cover designer,
and you could handle that?
I would always recommend hiring out.
Maybe you already know an editor,
and you're able to work something out
like a quid pro quo system, and now you can,
you know, waive that.
For a book that's about 6,100 words, less than $1,000,
this is not too bad.
And if you want to take advantage of any of the services,
again, there's some links down in the description down below
to each one of the service providers that I used,
as well as go over to dalelinks.com/fiverr.
And also, what about publishing the book?
Well, good news, the final part
of the how to self-publish a book series
is gonna be coming up next here, in this very next video.
I'll be releasing it very soon if it's not already out.
You got to click on this next one.
In the meantime, I will talk to you then.