It'll Cost You To Play In Publishing

One word of warning authors hear over and over again is to never pay to have someone edit or consider your work. Please understand, I am not talking about someone who is a paid book doctor. I am referring to those people who say, "Send me $50.00 and I will determine if I want to represent you."

This is not good.

But, over the years, I get authors who ask me how they go about getting their books published or getting their books to the readers on a limited budget.

And frankly, there is no easy way around this. Publishing is going to cost you in a lot of different ways. Your approach to publishing and how far you will want to take your career will determine the amount you are going to need to spend.

Let's consider some pretty common expenses:

Conferences This is a big one and a very necessary expense. Going to conferences, and I am talking about the bigger conferences is important in a lot of ways. First of all, you will be getting great information from the experts. Your big gun editors and agents will be there and giving out a lot of advice. Workshops at those larger conferences tend to be a bit higher in quality, again, because the big guns are there. So, expect the following expenses:

• Conference fees
• Transportation
• Hotel
• Materials
• Food

Yes, you could be looking at a good $1000+ for a conference such as this.

Marketing Depending on how you are published will determine how much you spend here. If you take the traditional approach, your publisher may do a lot, but please understand, the publisher WILL NOT do everything. If you are self-published, this will be 100% on your shoulders. What are we looking at here? Professional websites, advertisements in major print publishing, books to reviewers, books for "goody bags" to be given away for free, contests, mailings, bookmarks and other swags. You cannot make marketing material that looks cheap. You might think you can do it all on your own using Open Source Software, but remember, you get what you pay for.

Technology Yes, you will need a great computer and a quality word processing program. Don't skimp on this. This means quality Internet service, quality computer, quality printer and an email service that is going to help you out. I fully get a lot of you "live off of your phone" but understand, submitting manuscripts on you iPhone is not going to cut it. When I get a submission that says, "submitted from my iPhone" 99% of the time I know this is going to be a project that is complete garbage and the person really has no idea what he or she is doing.

Editorial Services This is for those of you who are planning on doing all of this on your own. Unless you are an English major with a huge background in grammar, you will probably need to find someone and pay that person to do the editing for you. Traditional publishers do have an editorial team there to serve you, self-publishers or Print On Demand programs do not. Time to fork out some big bucks here.

Legal Fees Again, this is for those of you who are going to do this on your own. If you don't know how to read contracts and work through that legal language, or you don't know how to apply for an ISBN and Copyright, it is time to pay some big bucks here. Please be aware, you will need to find someone who knows contract law, and more importantly, publishing contracts.


The issue here is that it will cost money. How much you put into it will be up to you. Just remember, that there are no short cuts.