Doing the math… at a $2.00 royalty that’d be at least 50 sales to break even on formatting costs. However, I don’t pay for eBook formatting services which could run $100.00 or more for a proper and professional product (not a ten-buck Fiver special). I also pay for promotions through discount email sites like Booksy (Free and Bargain), Ereader News Today, and Fussy Librarian as well as click-ads on BookBub and Amazon. Mary, my proofreader, and Elle, my cover designer, like to get paid and they’re totally worth it. It takes money to indie publish eBooks, and there’s no getting around it. Someday I’ll make new online friends at Apple and Google as well. Rather, I have a lot of help from a proofreader, a cover artist, and a whole bunch of friendly folks who I don’t know at Amazon, Kobo, and Nook. That’s because I don’t publish all by myself.

Notice how I used the term “indie” instead of “self” publishing.

But, I keep at it day-in and day-out-partly thanks to a simple system of formatting eBooks from Microsoft Word. I’ve been indie writing eBooks for eight years now, and I’ve put twenty for-sale publications online.

Sometimes I wonder why I subject myself to this nonsense. And, it requires a lot of commitment mixed with dogged determination and a blind belief that someone is actually going to read the stuff. It takes creative imagination along with some technical knowledge. Indie publishing an eBook is a lot of work.

Calibre ebook too small