3 Hacks to Publish Your Book on a Shoestring Budget

by Emmanuel Nataf,  @EmmanuelNataf

81% of Americans want to write a book in their lifetimes. However, a much smaller percentage actually goes on to publish a book. So what’s stopping them? You’ll hear that it usually comes down to two familiar resources:

1. Time
2. Cash

Time is the factor that everyone already talks about. But what about that second obstacle: money? The problem is that publishing a book can be expensive. Traditional publishers spend a ton of money to edit, design, market, and promote books. If you’re self-publishing, you’d need to take on those responsibilities yourself — which means that you’d need to take the cash straight out of your own pocket.

Luckily, there is a way to publish a book on a shoestring budget. Here are my three favorite tips for the self-publishers who want to get your book out there and save money at the same time.  

Take advantage of book review blogs

When you see a book that’s got a summary that interests you, what do you do next?

Chances are, you’ll scroll down to read the reviews. Then you’ll decide to buy a book based on the number of four- and five-stars you see.

That’s why reviews are so important — and the good news is that you don’t necessarily need to pay for one these days because book review bloggers exist on the Internet.

Who exactly are they? It’s all in the name: they’re bloggers who read and review books — for fun! It’s a win-win for both parties: these bloggers get to read more books, while you get a free book review under your belt. You might need to spend some time researching the right book review blogs for you, but in general it’s a clear (and free) opportunity for you to gain the reviews that your book will badly need.

Best practices:

• Do read the guidelines for submission. Every book review blog will tell you what format of book they prefer (.mobi, .epub, or a print book, for instance) and the best way to request a review (whether it’s through email or an online form). Follow these instructions to a T. It shows respect to the blogger and ups your chances to get a review out of them.
• Do start planning your book review campaign a couple of months in advance. You’ll want your review to be in place by the time you release your book, so it follows that you need to give bloggers time to read and write up the review for your book. Track and record everything on a spreadsheet.
• Don’t pester bloggers and ask repeatedly if they’ve received your request for a review. They’ve got the final say in whether or not they decide to read your book. Again: respect the blogger. They’re doing you a favor for free.

Download and use free apps

Ever wish that publishing a book was as simple as picking a title out of a book title generator?

Traditionally-published books go through a rigorous process before they come out on the market: they need to first go through a cycle of developmental edits, copy edits, and proofreads. Then the book cover needs to be designed and the text must be typeset onto the pages.

Each of the above stages is overseen by a publishing professional. There’s no real replacement for the experience of a professional, of course. That said, technology’s advanced enough that some apps can get close — and the best news is that plenty of them are free for you to use.

Here are a few ways that you can save through free apps:

1. To save money on a proofreader, use: Grammarly. This nifty app markets itself as a writing assistant, but it’s best as a substitute for a proofreader: it catches tiny spelling and grammar mistakes in your writing, which makes the end product that much more polished.
2. To save money on a copy editor, use: Hemingway. Like its namesake, Hemingway exists to further clear and concise writing. It’s capable of pointing out chunks of text where your writing gets dense and indecipherable. As a virtual (and free) copy editor, it’s pretty useful.
3. To save money on a typesetter, use: Reedsy Book Editor. This is a free tool that can typeset your book in a professional manner. It aims to simplify the typesetting (which is a complex art) for all authors.

A word of caution: the one area that can’t easily be replaced by an app is that of the cover design. Like it or not, readers do judge books by their covers — so it’s in your best interest to create a really first-rate book cover. For this, I strongly recommend aspiring to find a professional book designer. You may be able to put some stock images together in Paint or GIMP, but chances are that it won’t come close to a professionally designed cover.

Create the book yourself!

Why do you need to research print-on-demand services when you can make a book yourself?

This tip is for those of you on an extreme shoestring budget. If you make the book yourself, it’ll merely cut you back some printing paper and Elmer’s glue: not too shabby, especially when you consider the beautiful product you’ll end up producing.

So what’s involved? Basically, a book is composed of booklets that are called folios. These folios are made up of eight signatures, which is simply a sheet of paper with text printed on both sides. The most complicated part of this procedure is making sure that you print and assemble each signature in the right order, but this post on making a book in five steps will guide you through any tricky waters.

Follow the steps in the post — and voilà! You’ll emerge with a book that would be a perfect memento or a nice gift for someone special.

Best practices:

• Do get your materials ready ahead of time. In a nutshell, you’ll need printing paper, glue, a glue gun, some thin fabric, a stapler, a metal ruler, and cardboard.
• Do choose the right kind of paper. This is more important than you might think! Paper that’s too thin or thick will adversely affect a person’s reading experience. Look for paper stock that’s uncoated and 70 or 80 grams per square meter if you’re aiming to re-create a professional book.
• Don’t go this route of making your own book if your goal is to do a big print run. Though it’s cheap, the time you’ll need to invest in making thousands of books yourself probably won’t be worth it.

Emmanuel Nataf is the founder and CEO of Reedsy, a marketplace that connects authors and publishers with the world’s best editors, designers and marketers. Emmanuel dedicates most of his time to building Reedsy’s product and is interested in how technology can transform cultural industries. You can find him on Twitter.

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