Everyone and their mother’s brother’s sister’s uncle wants you to buy their author services. This could be editing, formatting, layout cover design, social media help and book advertising and promotion services. If you have a rich benefactor, thousands of extra dollars or one of those black credit cards with no limit, fantastic. You can buy all this stuff and not care. For the rest of us, we have to think about what’s in our bank accounts, what bills need paid and if we have an extra dollar to our names. So, let’s talk about how much it costs in books to purchase certain services. The Editorial Freelancers Association lists the prices of editing services.
The Example Book
For the metrics in this article, we’re going to assume that you wrote an 80,000 word, 320 page book and you are charging $2.99 per ebook and $14.99 per paperback. You’ve also enrolled your book in Kindle Unlimited (Select), which earns .0045 cents per page flip. If someone flips the whole book, you’ll earn $1.44.
Book Profits Per Sale
Kindle Ebook - $2.04 (There’s a 5 cent fee that Amazon charges randomly)
Kindle Paperback - $1.90 (I can’t remember if it’s 1.90 or $2-something. We’ll go with $1.90)
Kindle Unlimited - .0045 cents per page flip or $1.44 for an entire book flipped (The current going rate as of November 2021)
Average Per Book Profit - $1.79
The below method can be interpreted two ways:
The first way is how many books you need to sell before you can hire these services. This method means that you are going to publish your first few books entirely yourself with 0 outside help.
The second method is how many books you need to sell to break even. This assumes you have money saved to pay for services prior to publishing your book.
Book Cover
Book covers are extremely important. This is the first thing you’re going to need. After all, you can’t promote your books on your website or social media or publish your book without a book cover. It could be argued that you need a book cover before you even start writing your novel.
We’ll assume that you hired a professional graphic designer because you do not want any stock images. Professional book covers by graphic designers are about $300. This assumes they make $50 an hour, and it’s gonna take them 6 hours to do your book cover. The good news is that the pricing is typically per cover, not by the hour.
- Kindle Ebook – 147 books
- Kindle Paperback – 158 books
- Kindle Page Flips – 66,667 page flips (208 whole books)
- Average Number of Books You Need to Sell - 168
Developmental Edit
This is a deep edit of the work, looking for big flaws in plots, subplots, structure and character development. We’ll assume this costs $40 per 1,000 words or $3,200 to edit an 80,000 word book. That’s about mid-range. I’ve seen this service as high as $5,500.
- Kindle Ebook – 1,569 books
- Kindle Paperback – 1,684 books
- Kindle Page Flips – 7,111,112 (2,223 books)
- Average Number of Books You Need to Sell – 1,788
Line Edit
This type of edit involves the editor editing the book line by line to make sure it flows consistently, sentence and paragraph structure is consistent and correct. They’ll also fix typos, grammar and spelling errors. The average cost for this service is .04 cents a word or $3,200, roughly the same price as that developmental edit.
- Kindle Ebook – 1,569 books
- Kindle Paperback – 1,684 books
- Kindle Page Flips – 7,111,112 (2,223 books)
- Average Number of Books You Need to Sell – 1,788
Proofreading
Proofreading is the last editing step prior to publication. This type of edit looks for spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes. The average rate is .02 cents a word or $1,600 for the example book.
- Kindle Ebook – 784 books
- Kindle Paperback – 842 books
- Kindle Page Flips – 355,556 (2,223 books)
- Average Number of Books You Need to Sell – 894
Book Formatting and Layout
This is where your manuscript is put into a format for ebook and print so that it can be published. The average price is .03 cents per word or $2,400.
- Kindle Ebook – 1,176 books
- Kindle Paperback – 1,263 books
- Kindle Page Flips – 533,334 (1,667 books)
- Average Number of Books You Need to Sell – 1,340
Marketing/Promotion Services
This assumes you hired someone or a firm to market and promote your book. This service is typically .08 cents per word or $6,400.
- Kindle Ebook – 3,137 books
- Kindle Paperback – 3,368 books
- Kindle Page Flips – 1,422,222 (1,667 books)
- Average Number of Books You Need to Sell – 4,445
If you hired one of all of these services for your book, you would need to sell 10,423 books to either afford the services or to break even. The average number of copies sold per book in the first year is 500. If you were to wait until you earned enough to pay for these services, you may have to write as many as 21 books before you could hire anyone.
