NEW: Guided Publishing Experience: POWER Anthologies – Apply NOW!
Day 3: Let’s Talk About Money
Yesterday, we talked about the time commitment you need to make to writing your book, and the professionals you might hire to help you with some or all of that.
Today, we’re going to talk about budgets, and realistic book production costs.
While it’s possible to do almost all the work yourself and create a passable product, especially if you have some writing talent, the truth is it takes a team of professionals working together to produce a truly professional book.
Realistically, even if you do all the ‘authoring’ work yourself, for a 50,000-word book, you need to budget for:
- Book cover design: €100-€1000+
- Interior Book Design & Formatting: €500-€1500
- Proofreading €500-€3000+
- Website hosting/design & social media set up €100-€500
- Marketing and promotion: €500-€5000+
That means realistically, you need a budget of €1700 and up. Ideally, you’d have a budget of €5,000 or more if you want to get your book off the ground with marketing and promotional activities, or to do a print run so that you have copies on hand to sell or give away to promote your business.
If you choose to outsource parts of the writing process outlined here, that’s going to increase your required budget to get your book to completion. For each module you chose to outsource, you should budget at least:
| Module | Role | Hours | Hourly Rate | Total |
| Preparing to Write | Personal Assistant | 25 | €20 | € 500 |
| Research | Market Researcher | 30 | €50 | €1500 |
| Perfecting the Pitch & Outlining | Developmental Editor | 30 | €50 | €1500 |
| Telling Stories, Citing Sources, and Connecting the Dots | Ghostwriter | 100 | €60 | €6000 |
| Editing for Content | Line Editor | 50 | €25 | €2500 |
| Editing for Style | Copyeditor | 50 | €25 | €2500 |
| Preparing to Launch, Launch, and Post Launch | Book Marketer | 100 | €50 | €5000 |
| Total | €19,500 |
Only you can decide for yourself which makes more sense for your business.
Today, I want you to think about your book budget and how you want to allocate it.
- How much of the work do you want to do yourself for creative and self-fulfillment purposes?
- How much do you want to do yourself for budget purposes?
- How much is your personal time worth to your business, and which activities would it make more sense to outsource?
At the same time, don’t give up if you have a budget of zero. You may have to accept that your product may not be as slick and polished as a professionally produced book. You may also have to put in some extra time and effort to learn a few skills along the way. But you CAN still craft a decent book that looks impressive. You will just have more work to do than your peers with a budget.