How much it cost me to self-publish my book

This topic bubbled to the surface recently, after I blogged about how to self-publish a book, or first 5 and second 4 circles of Hell. Namely, people asked me how much it cost me, specifically, to self-publish Siren Suicides, my first trilogy. And the answer is, it cost me $170. How is that possible? Well, let me tell you my story and let me outline the process I went through, and let me give you prices that people cited to me, and from that you can calculate a range of cost, from nothing to thousands of dollars. Before you read any further, know that I have collected this information from people I worked with and I might be a bit off. If I am, feel free to correct me in the comments, deal? Well then, here we go.

Editing. I'm not including writing as the first step, as I'm assuming you don't have a ghost writer who wrote your novel for you. Let's assume that you're the one who wrote your novel, however many drafts it took you. Now you're ready to send it to a professional editor. Well then, how much does it cost?

•  What did it cost me. I was lucky to have befriended Colleen M. Albert on Twitter, an independent editor, and I was lucky to have been chosen her pro bono project of the year. Editing Siren Suicides cost me nothing.
• What it usually costs. From what I heard, if you hire an independent editor, it may cost you anywhere from $500 to $2000 per book and up, $500 considered cheap.  This has been calculated from .0060- .010 per word, for a book of around 75K words.  

Book design / cover / illustrations. Great. Your book has been edited and now it's ready to be formatted, but you can't usually format a book unless some design decisions have been made. Just for the sake of simplicity, I will bundle all three things here into one. They can all be done by one artist, several, or not done at all (CreateSPace offers pre-made book covers, for example). So, what's the cost?

• What did it cost me. For book design I made decisions myself, based on books which I loved, like Harry Potter or 1Q84. My daughter, who is a design student, illustrated all three books for me and created book covers as well. Therefore, book design, cover, and illustrations cost me nothing.
• What it usually costs. I have seen people bundle book design together with formatting, but I do not know the specific price for book design only (I covered in detail what I mean by this here). A friend of mine recently hired a professional illustrator to do a book cover and illustrations for each chapter, and it cost $7,000 total for both. There are separate artists who do only book covers. I have seen prices from $500 (cheap) to $2,000 and higher. 

Formatting. Once you have made your design decisions, got your illustration art and book cover files, you are ready to format your book. That is, it has to be technically prepared for publication, have proper margins, fonts, etc. Now, to the cost.

• What did it cost me. I have met Stuart Whitmore on Google+. After he has heard about my futile attempts to format the books myself, and because suicide happens to be an important topic for him,  he picked me to be "a special almost-pro-bono project" for $75. I also contributed by helping him promote his company Crenel Publishing. Therefore, formatting all three Siren Suicides books cost me $75 total.
• What it usually costs. From what I have seen online, and based on what Crenel Publishing offers, professional formatting can be anywhere from $300 to $500 per book and higher.

Printing. I have self-published my books through CreateSpace, and so this is the only printing source I am familiar with. The cost is minuscule (unless you want to print drafts of your book, then read this blog post).

• What did it cost me. Since all three covers of Siren Suicides books are very similar, and the files have been created very similarly, I have only tested one printed proof of the book, and it cost me $5 for the book and $15 for the expedited shipping.
• What it usually costs. That is the cost on CreateSpace for proofs, $5, although I am not sure if it changes depending on the thickness of the book. Add shipping, and you got it. 

Distribution. Again, because I have published via CreateSpace on Amazon both paperbacks and ebooks for Kindle, this is the only distribution channel that I paid for. 

• What did it cost me. I have paid $25 per book for extended distribution to book stores and libraries, so for the whole trilogy it ended up being $75 total.
• What it usually costs. If you buy CreateSpace extended distribution, it costs $25 per book, flat fee.

There are more costs that you may incur, for example, cost of marketing. I'm not including here the cost of my website - it happens to be my primary vehicle for marketing, like a base station. Any time I tweet a link to my books, I usually use the link to my website's Books page. It costs me about $15 per month. Without this cost, if you add it all up, it comes out to $170 total. That's all. The rest of the cost comes out from book sales, and I get the rest in royalties. The good thing about this is, I don't have to pay money upfront. Have you self-published a book? How much did it cost you?

Write first, research later!

Recently, out of multiple Twitter conversations, this topic about research bubbled up to the surface, with many heated opinions on it, that all came down to the following questions. Should I do research before starting on a novel?  Should I do research while I'm writing my 1st draft, or 2nd draft, or what number draft? Should I not write at all if I haven't done research? How much research do I need to do, when, how, why, and can someone hold my hand, please, because I'm afraid to start writing my novel because I haven't done the appropriate research? And more, in the similar manner. The funny thing is, I've been through this. I've done a ton of research, in various stages of writing, and I came to this very simple conclusion, for which I know I will be beaten up by an angry mob of writers who believe otherwise. Because, I say, write first, research later! Hey, don't look at me like that, I can back this up, okay? Of course, my 1 year of experience is nothing, in the grand scheme of things, but to me it's something, it's everything, actually. It saved me time and multiple headaches, so here is what I have to say on the subject. 

Let your story drive your research, not your research drive your story. Before I seriously started writing my 1st novel, SIREN SUICIDES (and I started 3 times and abandoned it 2 times), I fretted, I trembled, I bit my nails in fear, because I was about to write about all things water, songs, boats, fishing, and even a touch of Greek mythology, of which I had no clue. I still don't. I've never gone fishing on a boat, I never dived, I never studied music, because singing in a choir and trying to play piano for a couple months doesn't count. I'm not a Greek mythology scholar, nor do I understand how sound passes through water and other scientifical stuff like that. In light of this and scared out of my mind, on top of it petrified of things like character development, plots, subplots, dialogue, exposition, style, you name it, I read a ton of books on writing and started doing detailed research. I wrote out a list of characters, I wrote a biography for each (gotta have backstory, right?), I bought books on marine life, I studied tides in Puget Sound (a lot of action is happening there), I researched types of fish, I researched... well, I better stop here because I researched a lot. I even went as far as plotting out the entire novel 3 (!) times, writing and rewriting it, a la Garth Nix style. Guess what, once I started writing, 90% of this research (90%!!!) went down the drain. All these hours I spent, were for nothing. I had fun, yes, but they didn't add to the story. In fact, those details distracted me, and I paid for it, paid with having to write more drafts than I needed. With ROSEHEAD, my 2nd novel, I ditched the whole research thing, and here is what happened.

When you commit to a story, the universe aligns in your favor. I'm not kidding. I had this epiphany multiple times now while writing ROSEHEAD, and I want to scream about it on every corner of the universe, because... *drumroll* ...instead of having to write 5 drafts, I think I will only need 2! Partially this is due to the fact that it's my 2nd novel and by now I have learned to write cleaner and hold things in my head, but partially it's due to the fact that I focused on the story from the start, I committed to it, and the story paid me back, so to say. You heard this saying before, write what you know? Well, I understand what it means now. It doesn't mean, write what you actually know in terms of factual knowledge, it means, write about what you have experienced emotionally, because you can fake everything else but your knowledge of life. You know how they also say, you don't know what it's like having a kid until you actually have one? The same principle applies. If you have experienced love, joy, grief, anger, bitterness, fury, terrible loss, amazing gain, you can write about them all convincingly. But if you haven't, no matter how much research you do, your reader won't believe you. Here is my method. I start writing my 1st draft and I write down the 1st thing that comes to my head. People's names, occupations, locations, everything. If something puzzles me, I may do a quick Google search, to find the correct term for something, and I move on. I let the story ask me questions, and then in 2nd draft all I have to do is simply supply the details that are missing, but the story is written down already, and that's the most important part. For example, I made up a forest on the outskirts of Berlin in ROSEHEAD, and today I learned that there actually is one, it's Grunewald. I had goosebumps. And this is not the only time that it happened. It's like my brain knows better than me, you know what I mean?

Even if you're wiring a historical novel, it's all about the story. I have heard people tell me that because I write fantasy, I can get away with not doing research beforehand. But I disagree. Historical novel or not, a story is a story is a story. It's about characters, about people, and stuff that happens to them based on their decisions. Aside from that, you can dress them up as medieval princes or aliens in spacesuits, it doesn't matter. If the reader doesn't care for your characters, no matter how detailed and authentic you are in your creation of the historical background, the reader will toss your book. The secret is, the reader will forgive research blunders in favor of the story, not the other way around. And it's a harsh lesson to learn, because once a reader is burned, a reader is very unlikely to pick up another novel written by you. Ouch. So what do you do? You research as you go, just enough to give you some information, a quick glance at an article or an image, not more, and keep moving forward. Keep writing. Write out your heart, write for the reason you started writing in the first place, and worry about specific details later. At least, this is my approach, and I'm loving it. After I'm done with ROSEHEAD, which is turning out not so much fantasy but more magical realism, I will start on IRKADURA, a literary novel set in Soviet Union in the 80's, and even though I am originally from Russia, I have forgotten many things. Yet I don't plan to do research until I complete the 1st draft, and then only sparingly, only enough to make the story sound authentic, focusing on the characters and not on the correct historical facts.

There. Wait... I hear someone knocking on my front door. It's the mob! They came for me! They... Oy! Let me shout something else in my defense. I only meant research about fiction books, hear me? Ouch, that looks like bananas! Don't throw bananas at me! Don't... Well, jokes aside, what about you? Can't wait to hear about your struggles in regards to research. 

Genre jumping

All right, so this is something I sort of have done, having written screenplays in the past that were not entirely fantasy, having written fantasy and preparing to write a literary novel (after finishing my 2nd novel, ROSEHEAD) called IRKADURA and set in the 80's in Soviet Union, and after that a sci-fi novel called PAGE TURNER (temporary title for now). Both concepts are already worked out and both go beyond what I have done before. And you know what? I'm so excited to try something new, that I tell you, disregard what anyone says, jump around as much as you want! Take a look at Hugh Howey, the indie success story who broke through the sky with his sci-fi novel WOOL, and who has been talking about trying romance and other genres. I say, do the same. Write what excites you, write until you feel comfortable, and then throw yourself into a new uncomfortable genre. Why? To stay motivated and hungry. Let me illustrate.

Write not to fit into a genre, write to stay true to yourself. I get many people asking me about the types of books I write and what genre they are in, and I always have a hard time describing my stories, because they are part fantasy, part mystery, part suspense, there is even some romance there, and lately I've been tempted to add sci-fi elements too. I remember way back, when I just started writing SIREN SUICIDES, I was worried sick about how to categorize it, and then I simply gave up. I thought, I will write what I feel and then it will categorize itself. And it did! My Beta Readers categorized it for me as urban fantasy. Same goes for any story. I think genres have been invented by readers, to be able to navigate the massive amounts of books writers produce. Of course, I don't have factual knowledge to back up this fact, but it makes sense, doesn't it? There are plenty of writers who write for a very specific genre, but unless you have done a lot of writing to know how you can follow the rules and write something very specific, if you're a rookie writer like me, I say, forget about genres all together. Write how it feels true to you and to you only.

Let the story dictate the genre, not the other way around. Here is a recent example I can share with you. I set out to write ROSEHEAD as pure fantasy, and as soon as I started it, it made me add elements from classic detective murder stories, and the deeper I went, the more pronounced they became. At this point, I don't even know what specific genre or sub-genre it is, but I do know that not worrying about it gave me freedom to write it as it unfolded itself. The biggest obstacle any writer has is the infamous writer's block, and one reason we have it is doubt. Trying to pick out a genre will only add to your doubt and threaten to block you. Drop it. Let your story flow, especially let it flow when you're writing your 1st draft. It will unfold and surprise you, and when you start editing it, it will start shining, ultimately becoming a certain genre itself, without you having to do anything with it. 

Pick new challenges, push yourself to grow as a writer.  When you stay in the realm of the same old comfortable genre, you eventually stop growing. It's like having a job for many years and being afraid to move on. You know your coworkers, you've gotten used to them, to your routine, you know what you have to do inside and out. Of course you don't want to move! But you also feel like you're starting to get bored a little, then some more, and more, until you lose your creative spark and wonder what happened. Fatigue is what happened. We were designed in such a way that we had to constantly move and forage for food when we were hunting for mammoths, before we could buy prepackaged mammoths in a supermarket (well, not exactly mammoths, but you get the point). This doesn't mean that you have to abandon your genre all together. No, not at all. It only means that once in a while it's good to break out of a well oiled machine and try something new. You never know what you will find, but the energy of learning will make you hungry again, hungry and excited, so I say, got for it! Try it. If it doesn't work, you can always write another book.

Have fun! We writers often forget this very simple rule. Writing, above all, is pure fun. Just think about it. You get to fool people, you get to make up the craziest stuff you can come up with, you make people believe in it, and then, on top of it all, you make people pay for it, to partake in your imagination. I mean, is there anything better than that? Want to try writing romance? Do it. Want to try your hand at horror? Why not, go for it! Want to hammer out a sci-fi novel or two? You can make it happen. You can write any story, in any genre, you're a writer, and that's what writers do. Like Anton Chekhov said, "I can write about anything you like. ... Tell me to write about this bottle, and I will give you a story entitled "The Bottle."

Well then, what are you waiting for? Go jump genres and see what you come up with! And chime in here, I would love to know what you think on the subject, as always.