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“I Can’t Afford to Self-Publish” — Yes, You Can

The Wordslinger Show

5,127 views

“I can’t afford to self-publish.”

I hear this from writers all the time—and I think it’s based on one of the biggest misconceptions about indie publishing.

You can self-publish a book for **$0**.

In this Wordslinger 10-Shot, I break down the real costs of independent publishing, including editing, formatting, cover design, distribution, and marketing—and show you where you can spend money, where you can save it, and where you may not need to spend anything at all.

We’ll also talk about the important difference between legitimate indie publishing and expensive “publishing services” that charge authors thousands of dollars while taking control of their work.

Because here’s the bigger point: You don’t need a huge budget to become an indie author. But if you want to build a sustainable writing career, you do need to start thinking like a publisher—and like a business owner.

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☕ *IN THIS EPISODE*

00:00 — “I can’t afford to self-publish”
01:17 — Indie publishing vs. vanity publishing
02:19 — When publishing services become a scam
03:22 — Do you really need to pay for professional editing?
04:23 — Free and inexpensive book formatting options
05:52 — Scrivener, Vellum, and other formatting tools
06:24 — Draft2Digital and low-cost publishing tools
08:28 — Creating a book cover on a budget
10:33 — How little self-publishing can actually cost
11:11 — Free ebook and print distribution
11:58 — Can you really publish for $0–$100?
12:39 — Marketing your books without spending money
13:22 — Building your author platform for free
14:41 — The real cost of indie publishing
15:17 — Why writers need to think like business owners
16:41 — The huge advantage of ebooks and print-on-demand
17:38 — Traditional publishing won’t eliminate your expenses
19:34 — Give your book every chance to succeed

🔔 *SUBSCRIBE TO WORDSLINGER*

If you’re a writer trying to build a career—not just finish a manuscript—subscribe to Wordslinger.

This is where we talk honestly about writing, publishing, book marketing, author business, creativity, technology, and what it actually takes to make a living with your words.

Whether you’re indie publishing, traditionally publishing, or still figuring out which road to take, you’ll find practical guidance here for every stage of your writing and publishing journey.

*FIND Kevin*

Find Kevin and his books:
https://kevintumlinson.com

Join Kevin on Substack:
https://kevintumlinson.substack.com

Wordslinger Podcast home page:
https://wordslingerpodcast.com

*SERVICES FOR AUTHORS*

Polish your writing and make it ready for publishing with ProWritingAid:
https://tidd.ly/3NCdlk5

Publish your book to every major retailer online, get your book into print and ebook, and get support the whole way at Draft2Digital:
https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger

Find a virtual assistant to help you market your books—and more—at AuthorAnchor:
https://authoranchor.com

*TOOLS & RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE*

Draft2Digital
Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)
Kobo
Barnes & Noble
Google Play Books
Apple Books
Canva
Calibre
LaTeX
Scrivener
Vellum
Fiverr
Substack

💬 *YOUR TURN:* What do you do to keep the cost of indie publishing down? What free or inexpensive tools have saved you money? Drop them in the comments—other writers may discover exactly the resource they need.

#SelfPublishing #IndieAuthor #WritingAdvice #BookPublishing #AuthorBusiness #BookMarketing #WritingCommunity #Wordslinger

20 Comments

@TerryL.Cooper1.0 1 month ago

I came up for air to grab something to eat and thought I'd stop by. I saw this posted as a meme on FB and thought of you lol

"You cannot rage against the machine if you're asking it to summarize your emails."

Back to my next Top 100 seller!

@RodneySOwens-poetry 1 month ago

Thank you for sharing this, Wordslinger. My first 3 poetry books were freaking brutal. I went with a Vanity Press (2004, 2005 and 2008) and paid through the f**king nose. (I hadn't quite discovered YouTube to know any better. LOL) So... when I went to publish my 4th poetry book, I self-published....AND republished my other books. I went with Word2Kindle and GetCovers and I am EXTREMELY happy with ALL the results. (Now I can afford to do book shows) As far as expenses, I was able to self-publish four books, create 4 brand new covers all for WAY...and I mean WAAAAY under what I paid for ONE book with a Vanity Press. That is the path I finally took and the path I will still be taking in the future. (sorry, I'm rambling. LOL) Again, thank you for sharing thins info. Take care and take it easy.

@wilshade 1 month ago

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I was one of those who didn't think I could afford to self-publish. I'm 65, disabled, and on fixed income. The AI accusation trend scares me away from trad publishing. I've used AI to help edit but did all of the editing and rewriting myself. Now that I know where to start, I'll put the effort and energy into Indy publishing. Thank you!

@JoJo-zl7qh 1 month ago

I have self published multiple books in the last few years. I didn’t spend a penny doing any part of the process. I edited it myself. Formatted it myself using Pages which is free on Apple products. It was very easy to do it all. And I didn’t even pay for marketing. I just mentioned it in Facebook reader groups. I didn’t make tons of money. But I made a consistent hundred dollars a month or so until I stopped promoting it. Unfortunately it takes a lot of promoting to get a wave of people to start reading it and it quickly becomes repetitive and a little annoying. I wanted to stop doing that and start writing again. Once I stop promoting, within a couple months, it started dwindling down. I haven’t mentioned any of my books in over a year and I still get around $40 a month in sales between four books. It’s not tons of money, but I think it’s fine considering how long since I mentioned it at all to anyone.

I agree, you can do it for free, but you’re not going to make as much money without putting money into it in my opinion. At least for the vast majority of us. But I do think that it’s possible to publish for free and pay for ads if it’s doing well. I wish I would’ve paid for ads when I started getting the hype. I feel like then it could have really escalated into a good amount. But I’ve taken a step back the last couple years and just been working on new books to publish, not worrying about my other books at this point. I want to build up a backlog so that when I do decide to pay for advertising it makes it much more worth the cost. All of my research has shown that without a backlog you’re at best breaking even and my past books are in multiple pen names so advertising one will not help with the others. Hopefully with the next books that I’m going to start publishing soon, that will change. Since it will all be under the same pen name. Fingers crossed. I did pay for quite a bit of things this time around though. I wanted to see if it made a difference.

@Firsthillsecret 1 month ago

Food for thought. Great,as usual.

@mysterion4301 1 month ago

I'm helping a 72-year-old friend self-publish a book on KDP this year. He's old, and it's been his dream since high school. A vanity press asked him for $20,000, and he asked me if that was fair. I told him it was very fair to the vanity press, but it was robbing him. Right now, I think we can bring his book in for less than $200 and if some of my skills improve, perhaps for as little as $80. I loved the information in your video...

@yorkieandthechihuahua 2 weeks ago

Thanks for your words. Honestly, my hope is to write/finish a novel and sell at least one book to at least one person who is not family and doesn't hate it. I'm not looking to make a career of it, but to simply finally have the ability to breathe on my "never did write that book did you" feeling since early adulthood before I die. Any more than that would be amazing. But with such a limited initial aim, the repeated statements I've heard of "Pay 2k for editing" is a complete mismatch.

@MichaelaDenning 1 month ago

Thank you for this insightful video. As a self-published author, I completely agree with all of your points. There are many free tools available that make independent publishing very accessible.

@milestrombley1466 1 month ago

Thanks for the video. I planned to use KDP Select, Facebook, Payhip, and Subtack for my platform.

@ACooperNorthwoodsWriter 1 month ago

I love Atticus for both ebook and print. It's continually improving and was a one-time cost. Well worth it.

@RonaldHonda 1 month ago

I have just subscribed. Thank you.

@holbrookjr 1 month ago

Thank you for this great video! I'm going to check out Calibre for my next project!😊🙏

@eric81766 1 month ago

For a professional layout software, Canva (relatively) recently bought Affinity and made it available for free (requires a Canva account, optional paid upgrades for AI stuff). The publisher mode is good professional layout software, which means it's gonna be more complex than Word, but also way more capable. Things like page headers don't make me cry.

@ProfessorUdGuru 4 days ago (edited)

I had no idea that books were being printed on demand. My question is about illustrations. I want to have full color illustrations in my book but I heard that ebooks don't work with illustrations. What about illustrations in print books? I don't think I'm gonna like the answer. My last question is about the cover. My cover art incorporates the title as part of the illustration, like a sign on a mall: "Gods at the Mall" is the title of the book. Does ebook layout use text and fonts that would cover or obscure the artwork, or just exist under the artwork like on a website? My other last question: how do PDFs fit in, say at D2D for example. Because PDFs work well with full color illustrations, since the pages are a fixed size. Thanks for your excellent channel.

@FreyFantom 1 month ago

I think pro editing is a must but I am blessed I have editor friends I can do that for free.
As for art, I am an artist first. I am a multi-award winning artist since I was in high-school and am doing all the art/drawing everything myself for the cover and internal art.
I didn't want to do a comic for many reasons, but I am putting a ton of art inside of the book, similar to an Eastern light novel except pushing the boundaries a little more!

I agree with you there are ways to do this for free! Traditional publishing can cost a lot too since literally agents and various aspects can cost a lot too. I am choosing to self-publish because I need full control of my story and the art. I want no one to do any of this for me. I am currently learning how to do proper layout, edit, and do everything myself, making my editors job very easy at the end of the day.
People just gotta want to learn to be multi-skilled in things.

Hell, I am a multi-skilled artist in Oil, acrylic, watercolor painting, graphite and charcoal art, ceramics, sculpture, jewelry making, cosplay/fibers, graphic design, animation, 3D design and painting, AND I am a musician/artist/composer.
Learn to do everything!
Marketing I am learning right now from successful business folks I know!

@iammajor562 1 month ago

Thanks for all the tips! I’m an Indie author who is in the process of redoing my ebook cover because I can’t stand the Amazon templates…so far, so good!😎

@virginiaweir-hj1rt 1 month ago

Edited docx files can be uploaded into Reedsy Studio and formatted into print-ready PDF and epub files ready for submission to POD publishers and Amazon KDP.

@LuckyKentoBox 1 month ago

I'm getting pretty close to finishing my first manuscript and I was mulling the self publishing over trad publishing route and I kept circling back to self publishing myself. The latest AI scandal basically drove the nail in the coffin for me.