Is It Actually "Free" To Self-Publish Your Book On Amazon?

Here Are The Costs That You'll Have To Consider

Amazon Publishing Services have made publishing easy for everyone in the world. With Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), Amazon has facilitated publishers and authors to publish their books online, independently, and free of cost. This way, Amazon has attracted thousands of writers to contribute to more than 6 million e-books on the Amazon store.

All you need to publish a book on Amazon is to create a Publishing account with Amazon's KDP and upload your book; your book will be in the store in the next three days. But this is where the real challenges seem visible. Anyone can indeed publish on Amazon, but how do you make sure that your book stands out competitively in your genre? What can you do to ensure that your book will sell?

The Real Cost Of Self-Publishing

Getting your account ready is as easy as creating an email account, except that you also have to provide your tax information and banking information. But the real deal comes when you want to make your book stand out among the millions of other books. Making your book marketable is a challenge on its own.

The majority of authors allocate a budget of $2000 - $4000 to self-publish their books. You might ask that for a free platform like KDP, why would there be costs to self-publish? The truth is that the price is associated with making your write-up as creative, marketable, sought-after, salable, and elegant-looking as possible.

A writer is good for writing their mind out. But what they may not be good at is beautifying their writing. The effort to enhance and embellish their book includes everything from proofreading, formatting, editing, cover design to marketing. So let's break everything down.

Proofreading And Editing

You've successfully written your first manuscript after giving it a few reads and making sure that you haven't missed any key details. But did you check that every piece of grammar and vocabulary is error-free? Are you aware that you might have made a small typo or misplaced punctuation? While you might believe that finishing the manuscript with all the necessary material is the last stage of writing, but actually, the final step is proofreading.

Proofreading requires you to check for correctness in every possible way. On top of scrutinizing for overall correctness, this includes checking for compatibility in format, grammatical errors, punctuation errors, and typographical mistakes. But, of course, even after all your efforts, you might have made some error; we're all human. So it's best to invest some money in hiring a professional proofreader for your book. Typical charges of proofreaders start from $5 per 1000 words—some charge by the word, some by the page, and some by the book.

Depending on the kind of money you're looking forward to investing, you can even have some editors make some developmental and creative changes to your text without changing the context and meaning. Editing will cost more than proofreading, though. Reedsy, an online service for annual cost evaluations, says that for a 60,000-word manuscript, proofreading can cost up to $3 per page. Developmental editing can cost up to $7 per page. Similarly, copy editing can cost $5 per page.

Amazon has a "Look Inside" feature that allows potential buyers to see the first 10% of your book. Books are kept at a high pedestal by readers all around, and errors in grammar and punctuation are a huge turndown for readers. Your first 10% will make or break your sale. Readers can hardly bring themselves to get a book where the grammar is glaringly incorrect. But if your book is engaging and error-free, this will give the reader another incentive to come back and reread your works or even buy your next book whenever it comes. Not everyone is a Grammar Nazi, but a fluent and smooth reading experience is what readers yearn for. Proofreading is a worthwhile exercise even before uploading your book on KDP.

Book Cover Design

We've all heard the phrase "you shouldn't judge books by their covers," the unpleasant truth in the book sale market is that the book's front cover creates a considerable first impression. That impacts the decision of the reader to pick up your book. Naturally, as an author, you would want as many people as possible to read your book. It's strongly recommended that you should hire someone to do the artwork for you unless you're a graphic designer yourself. Having an effective cover is key to making a sale.

If there are two books in the same genre, the buyer might more likely prefer the one with a better-designed front cover. As much as you don't like to accept it, the reality is that people do judge books by their covers. A good and experienced designer can cost $500 or more. However, if you're willing to give the young designers a chance, they can charge $200 or more.

Book Formatting

KDP makes it easier to format your write-up because Amazon Publishing Services also offer Amazon Create for free to tailor-make and best edit your manuscript. Because KDP accepts popular formats DOCX, TXT, DOC, and PDF, a simple Word document can easily be formatted into a Kindle compatible e-book. But that isn't usually enough.

To keep your reader engaged with a more sophisticated and charming reading experience, you can use a formatting tool or service such as Vellum or more. Vellum has one-time fee of $249 if you plan on publishing multiple articles. Otherwise, formatting can cost between $200 to over $1500.

Book Marketing

Typically, marketing isn't a one-time cost. Understanding and reaching your target market is another ball game. Marketing means that your book has to be promoted on different platforms. It could mean that the author is supposed to have an excellent online presence. The author can have his own website where his attendance is based. Websites can be created for a low cost, especially when there are services like Squarespace and Flowww. Flowww is presently free, but Squarespace is a paid service.

In the age of social media, it has become essential to have an active presence of social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. These are free platforms, but advertising on these platforms isn't. The good news is that ads to a targeted audience can start for as low as $1 per day. On top of all of these, you might want to participate in third-party promotions or Amazon price promotions too.

In short, marketing isn't easy and requires time and investment. So, the more you invest in marketing, the more likely it is for you to drive readers' traffic towards you and your KDP's portfolio.

After reading all of this, you'll realize that while it's essentially free to publish your book, it's not ideally free to get readers to read your book. Although Amazon KDP has propelled many authors to success, at the same time, it's fair to say that there are some unavoidable costs involved, which are vital to success.

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