Cost of Publishing E Book on Amazon

[Tolkien]

I have an edited MS that I am considering self publishing as an E-book .Does anyone know the costs that come along with that?

I also have a ready made front cover.

 

[Lynea]

As far as I know, publishing through KDP costs nothing up front, they just take out of your book sales like any other publisher. I've heard about some possible drawbacks tho, like how it takes a long time for authors to build up enough sales to actually make an income. But that's not to discourage you from doing it; I know several authors who have gotten their start through KDP. Sorry I can't quote actual numbers tho, it's all relative to the project.

 

[ThinkerX]

I was going to go the Kindle Direct route.

Currently, I'm thinking 'Draft2Digital'

Draft2Digital

 

[Tolkien]

I was going to go the Kindle Direct route.

Currently, I'm thinking 'Draft2Digital'

Draft2Digital

Let me know if you go with them and how your experience was.

 

[Tolkien]

As far as I know, publishing through KDP costs nothing up front, they just take out of your book sales like any other publisher. I've heard about some possible drawbacks tho, like how it takes a long time for authors to build up enough sales to actually make an income. But that's not to discourage you from doing it; I know several authors who have gotten their start through KDP. Sorry I can't quote actual numbers tho, it's all relative to the project.

Is that paperback as well?

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Publishing is free for paperback, hardback, ebook, and audio for that matter, plus I think D2D's print layout tool is free also. However, I am always skeptical of automated print services with respect to orphans, widows, and ladders, but the automation gets better all the time. Since I had the basic skills already, I use InDesign for my print layouts.

 

[Ned Marcus]

The length of the ebook makes very little difference. You'll be charged a few cents more for delivery of a large file, but it's so small that most people don't notice.

 

[Prince of Spires]

As the others mentioned, the actual publishing part is free, both on Amazon and Draft2Digital (D2D). They both take a cut from your income, nothing up front. Both have the option of using a free ISBN they provide. Just note that that ISBN can only be used on their platform, and it will list them as the publisher of the book. Not a big deal, just something to be aware of.

On Amazon you make 70% of the list price for books between $2.99 and $9.99, minus a delivery fee (which is small unless you have lots of pictures, then it adds up). The 30% that goes to Amazon is their cut. Same with Draft2Digital, except that they take an extra 10%, so you roughly get 60% of the list price.

All services D2D offers are free. So you can use them to format your word document into an epub or PDF for free, even if you don't publish it via them. You will need these if you want to publish on Amazon. The epub for an ebook, the PDF for a paperback / hardcover. I think the formatting is good enough in most cases, but that might just be me. If you want a professional to do it, I think most services cost between $50 and $100.

As for the actual publishing itself, both websites are pretty much: Create an account, add payment and tax information, upload the manuscript, add some information like title and blurb, push publish.

Things to note:
- if you decide to use KDP select, then your ebook can only be published on Amazon. This is the amazon system where you get paid for pages read by people with a prime subscription.
- D2D doesn't have its own store. Instead it published to other stores. It can also publish on Amazon, but most people go direct to Amazon (it makes you most money, it's probably your biggest store, and you can do stuff like advertise if you go direct).
- Both D2D and Amazon can let you publish your paperback wide, that is to all bookstores that use IngramSpark as a distributor. Pick one or the other, not both. On Amazon it's call "expanded distribution". It's a checkbox you can mark when publishing your book. Many people publish their paperback direct to Amazon and use D2D for everywhere else.

 

[Tolkien]

Great info thanks guys.