How to self-publish a book: platforms, formats and pricing

Self-publishing is, in Wikipedia's definition, "author-driven publication of any media without the involvement of a third-party publisher". That one clause contains the whole deal: you keep control, set your own prices and can release work within weeks, and in exchange the production responsibility sits on you, "which includes editing, cover design, formatting, and marketing". This guide is the mechanics of that responsibility. Whether self-publishing is the right path for your book, against serializing or going traditional, is the question publishing paths answers; this page assumes the decision is made.

The production sequence

Reedsy's guide breaks the work into steps: write a book with market potential, edit the manuscript, get a cover, prepare the metadata, choose a distribution platform, price the book, publish and promote. In practice the paid steps cluster into three:

• Editing. Three passes in order: developmental editing (structure, plot, character), copy editing (line-by-line grammar and punctuation), then proofreading (the final typo pass). Reedsy's cost figure for a 60,000-word book is $1,000 to $2,000 for most editing services, with the advice that a tight budget at least covers the copy edit and the proofread.
• Cover design. "Your book cover is your most important book marketing asset," in Reedsy's phrasing, with a typical professional cost of $500 to $800. Templates exist; genre conventions, typography and spine width are what the professional is actually for.
• Formatting. An ebook needs an EPUB and a print edition needs a PDF; free tools handle straightforward prose interiors, and complex layouts justify a designer ($250 to $750 on average).

Reedsy puts the average total cost of self-publishing at $2,800 to $5,300. The line that separates all this from a scam: you are paying for services you own. Vanity publishing, as Wikipedia distinguishes it, has the author pay the costs but also sign a restrictive contract surrendering significant rights; the moment a company charges you for the privilege of being published and takes the rights, it is no longer self-publishing.

Platforms and formats

The direct ebook stores the sources name: Amazon's Kindle store through KDP, Barnes & Noble Press, Apple Books, Kobo Writing Life, Google Play Books. For reach beyond them, the aggregators and print services: Draft2Digital (which acquired Smashwords in 2022, and takes 15% of net royalties), PublishDrive, and IngramSpark for print, with its bookstore and library distribution.

The two formats have different economics. Print-on-demand, which emerged in the mid-1990s, eliminated inventory storage costs: nothing is printed until a reader orders it, and Reedsy's platform comparisons show print royalties as a share of list price minus printing costs (KDP Print at 50% to 60%, IngramSpark at 45% to 70%). The ebook side is where the volume sits, and Amazon is where that side grew: the 2007 launch of the Kindle and KDP was "a tipping point in self-publishing" that "opened the floodgates" into what Wikipedia calls a $1 billion industry.

Pricing and the 70 percent band

On KDP you choose between two ebook royalty options, 35% and 70%, and the choice is not free-floating. The 70% option exists only inside a price band, and KDP's own help pages state it exactly: as of July 7, 2026, the 70% royalty option price band on Amazon.com runs from $2.99 to $12.99, expanded from the previous $2.99 to $9.99, a cap that had stood since 2007. Price outside the band and the sale falls back to the 35% option. Two conditions attach to the 70% rate: delivery costs still apply, and the option covers only sales to customers in listed territories. In Brazil, Japan, Mexico and India, ebooks must also be enrolled in KDP Select to be eligible for the 70% option at all.

Reedsy's pricing craft around that machinery: benchmark against indie bestseller prices rather than traditional publishers' ebook prices, which it describes as deliberately overpriced to protect print sales, and use a series staircase, first book cheap, later volumes stepping up toward the top of the band.

Exclusivity versus wide

Only what the fetched sources state, because this debate generates more assertions than citations. The facts on the table: KDP Select is Amazon's enrollment program, and its advertised feature is access to Kindle Unlimited (Reedsy's platform table); Apple Books has "no exclusivity requirements" (same table); and KDP's own pages tie the four territories above to Select enrollment. Wikipedia's self-publishing article does not cover Kindle Unlimited at all, and neither fetched source quantifies what exclusivity earns or costs an author, so this guide will not either. The strategic argument itself, concentrating on Amazon versus going wide, is laid out with its tradeoffs in publishing paths.

Realistic returns

Wikipedia's article is blunt about the median: most self-published authors "make less than $1,000 per year", while roughly 40 authors sold over a million Amazon ebooks between 2011 and 2016. The famous cases are real, The Martian, Wool, Fifty Shades of Grey, and they are exceptional. What the model does deliver is a better split per sale than a traditional deal: Wikipedia records self-publishing payouts at "a four to five times a larger payout per sale," with royalties "sometimes as high as 70%". Self-publishing is a bet on volume you manufacture yourself, which is why the promotion steps (reviews, an author website and newsletter, the indie community) are not optional extras in Reedsy's sequence; they are the engine.

The serial contrast

Serial platforms and retail self-publishing are different machines serving the same story at different stages. The serial platform runs on free chapters and attention: discovery through rankings and tags, monetization through donations and advance chapters, the whole map in the serial platform landscape. The retail store sells artifacts: a finished, edited, covered book a stranger buys in one transaction. The sequence that connects them is community practice: serialize to build the audience, then publish the finished volumes; the store page's description is written with the same craft as any back cover (how to write a book blurb), and a novella-length side story is a natural first artifact while the main serial runs.

The mechanics, one line each: finish the book, pay for editing and a cover, prepare the metadata, choose the platforms, price inside the band that earns 70%, publish, and keep promoting. None of it is literary; all of it is the work a publisher used to do for you, which is the deal you accepted.