Publishing a book has no mandatory costs. Every gate that used to require money — typesetting, printing, distribution, a storefront — is now either free or paid out of the sale price. What that leaves is a much narrower question: which of the optional costs actually change whether the book sells.
What genuinely costs nothing
| Step | Free option | Catch |
|---|---|---|
| Writing | Any plain-text editor | None |
| Typesetting | Markdown exported to PDF and EPUB | Learn the export once |
| Cover | Canva, or a type-only cover | Design is on you |
| ISBN | Store-assigned, or none | It is the store's, not yours |
| Ebook distribution | Amazon KDP, Apple, Kobo | They take 30% |
| Print on demand | Paid out of each sale | |
| Your own storefront | Payhip, Gumroad free tier | A cut per sale |
| Proofreading | Text-to-speech, and a friend | The weakest link |
The free path, end to end
- Write in Markdown, one file per chapter, in any editor. No licence, no lock-in, and it is the format both exports start from — self-publishing from Markdown.
- Set the type once and export a PDF for direct buyers and print, and a reflowable EPUB for the stores: Markdown to PDF and Markdown to EPUB.
- Make a cover that reads at thumbnail size. A strong typographic cover with no image beats a bad photograph — ebook cover dimensions.
- Skip buying an ISBN. Let the store assign one, or publish without: do you need an ISBN?.
- Validate the EPUB with EPUBCheck, which is free and is the same tool the stores run: EPUB validation errors.
- Upload to Amazon KDP, and to Apple and Kobo if you are not exclusive: where to sell your ebook.
- Open a free storefront for direct sales, where the margin and the email addresses are.
That is a complete, sellable book for nothing. It is not a compromised version of a real one — the file a reader downloads is identical whether you spent nothing or three thousand.
The three things worth paying for
Being honest about where free actually costs you something. In order of how much the money changes the outcome:
| Cost | What it changes | |
|---|---|---|
| A proofread | $300–$1,200 | The most-cited fault in bad reviews |
| A cover, if you cannot design | $150–$800 | The click, before anything else |
| A structural edit | $500–$2,000 | Whether the book works at all |
If you can afford exactly one, buy the proofread. Readers forgive a plain cover and they do not forgive forty typos, and typos are the single most common thing a critical review mentions. What it costs to self-publish has the wider budget.
Before paying for any of them, do the free version of each properly. Four editing passes of your own remove most of what a structural edit would have caught, and they make whatever you do buy considerably cheaper: how to edit your own book.
Free proofreading that actually works
- Have the book read aloud to you. Any device will do it. Text-to-speech catches missing and doubled words instantly, which is the class of error your eye skips.
- Change the typeface and read it again. Unfamiliar setting makes familiar text visible.
- Read the last chapter first, then work backwards. It breaks the narrative pull that makes you skim.
- Trade with another writer. Proofread their book, they proofread yours. Costs a weekend and works.
- Check the non-prose separately — chapter numbers in sequence, the contents matching the headings, every link opening.
What "free" costs you instead
Time, and a specific kind of risk. Worth naming rather than pretending the free path is free in every sense.
- The store's cut. 30% on every store sale, forever. Over a book's life that is much more than any editor charges — which is the argument for selling direct alongside, not instead.
- Your afternoons. The cover, the export, the four editing passes, the metadata, the uploads.
- A store-assigned ISBN is the store's, so the same book on another store needs another one and you are not the listed publisher.
- No second opinion. The real cost. Nobody is telling you the middle drags, and you cannot see it yourself — how to get book reviews is how you find out after the fact, which is later than you want.
What to avoid at any price
- Paying to be published. A publisher pays you. Anything charging a fee to publish your book is a printing service with a marketing budget.
- Buying reviews or review packages. Against every store's terms, and the penalty is the listing — not a warning.
- "Free" formatting tools that keep your file. If you cannot export a clean EPUB and PDF and walk away, it is not free.
- Paid promotion before the book has reviews. Most newsletter promotions require a minimum rating anyway, and sending traffic to a listing with no social proof wastes it.
- Buying an ISBN you do not need yet. Buy one when you want to be the publisher of record, not on the way to a first ebook.
The realistic version
Publish the first book free, sell it, and spend the revenue on the second. That sequence works because the free path produces a genuinely finished object, and because the thing you most need — knowing whether anyone wants this book — cannot be bought at any price.
The one non-negotiable is the file itself. A reader who downloads something with a cover pasted onto page one, headings in the wrong sizes and no page breaks has learned what the book cost to make, and no amount of free was worth that. Getting the export right is the part that is free and still has to be done properly — a book launch checklist is everything that has to be true before you upload.