How much does it cost to write an ebook?

A lot more that you would think.

I recently ran across a blog titled; The True Cost of Self-Publishing a Book. Interesting article. If you peruse the infographic (the link to the infographic is buried in the text) you will find that authors that use the Reedsy service pay an average of $4800.00 for editing services (just the editing services). Then there’s the book cover, any formatting you want done, and the dreaded other things. It comes to a total (average) of $6,340.00 for professional services for a 60,000 word book.

Michael Doane who wrote the blog post (at https://blog.reedsy.com/cost-self-publishing-book) set his goal to have his book produced for $3,500.00. He did it, but $3.5K is a lot of money.

I’m trying to control cost (yes a moth would starve to dead in my wallet) and I’m looking at some serious editing at three cents a word for a 50,000 word for the book. That’s $1,500.00 for editing.

Book lay out people go on and on about how a poorly laid out book will turn off readers. I don’t get it. I have heard readers talk about how a book was hard to read, but they read it anyway.  Can you remember what the type font was in War and Piece?  Can you remember what the type font was in the last book you read? Do you care what the type font was? Do you know what a type font is?

When I formatted my first book I got out copies of five different books I liked. I liked the stories in the books not the format or grammar. All five books were laid out wildly different. They were all from major publishers so I got out a couple of indie books. No consistency there either. So I thumbed through the books picked out the things I liked and use them.

Things like; did the book have chapters and chapter titles. the font used, the margins used. The font I used is a default, I used Times New Roman. You can’t go wrong with Times New Roman. Margins were set to the same margins that were used in a paper back that I like and ended up being change to the Kindle default. Default font size was on the big side, it’s an ebook so paper cost is not a worry and as you get older you want large default font size (12 point or larger). My book looks like a book because it was make to look like a book. It didn’t cost $1200.00 to $2000.00 for a book designer. No ones has ever complained about the layout or that the book was hard to read. I would change it quickly if they did.

Note, I used a font with serf’s. Scientific tests show that fonts with serfs (serf means that the letters have little feet on the bottom, like the f and S in this post) are easier to read and are preferred for fiction.

I’m still looking for an editor that will do structural/developmental editing followed by proof reading after I incorporate the structural changes and copy editing after I incorporate the copy edit changes and I will pay the going rate.

Stay strong, write on.                    Professor Hyram Voltage