Self publishing is not free.

It’s true you can upload your book onto the Amazon site and to Smashwords for free, but if you want a professional job done you will have to pay for parts of it.

At a rough estimate it costs at the very least £500 to self publish a book, to include editing and cover design and other odds and ends such as fliers or postcards, review copies etc. (The dog comes free, bribed by biscuits.) If you’re hiring help with creating your paperback and converting to ebook that will bump the costs up; and if you’re publishing through Ingram Spark there’s a small fee to upload your book, plus £144 for ISBNS (sold in a minimum of 10).

It’s also a good idea to set aside something for marketing. I had my first go at promoting The Unlikely Adventures of Claudia Faraday at the weekend using an online site called ebooksoda. You register, upload your book details, blurb and price, and choose a category – historical romance in my case – and in return for a fee of $15 (£10 or so) they promote your book to their subscribers by email on one specified day; though the book remains on their site, further down the page, for a few days afterwards. It’s good to offer a discount, so you need to make sure this is in place on the day of the promotion. Amazon changed the price almost immediately, Smashwords likewise except for Nook, which took around 24 hours. (NB The price on the amazon.com site was showing up as $3.03 in the UK, but $2.99 in the US, for some reason.)

Result? Zilch. No sales whatsoever.

However, when I emailed ebooksoda to tell them I had registered with them but not received any emails or made any sales they responded swiftly, pointed out a blip in my registration and refunded the fee, even though there had been some click-throughs apparently. So thank you ebooksoda.

As I said before however each author, each book, each day is quite different. My next promotion is with bargainbooksy later this month. Better luck this time hopefully.