Every author asks this, and almost every answer online is either a marketing figure designed to look cheap or a horror story designed to look expensive. Here is the actual breakdown, based on what our clients pay and what the wider market charges in 2026.
The four costs you cannot avoid
If you are publishing a book that will sit credibly next to trade titles, four things have to be paid for. Everything else is optional.
1. Editing — £900 to £3,500
This is the line authors most often skip and most often regret. A copy edit on a 60,000-word manuscript runs roughly £900–£1,600. A line edit is £1,400–£2,800. A developmental edit, which addresses structure rather than sentences, is £1,200–£3,500 depending on how much work the manuscript needs.
You do not necessarily need all three. You almost certainly need at least a copy edit, and you should be suspicious of anyone who tells you otherwise.
2. Cover design — £350 to £1,200
A competent bespoke cover from a designer who works in publishing costs £500–£900 for a full print wrap. Below about £300 you are usually buying a template with your title dropped into it, which readers recognise instantly even if they cannot say why.
Cover design is the cheapest line on this list with the largest effect on sales. It is the last place to economise.
3. Typesetting and eBook conversion — £250 to £700
Print interior typesetting runs £300–£600 for a standard text-only book. Illustrated non-fiction and anything with tables costs more because the work is genuinely harder. A hand-built, device-tested EPUB is £150–£350.
4. ISBNs — £0 to £190
Amazon KDP gives you a free ISBN, but it lists Amazon as the publisher of record and cannot be used elsewhere. In the UK, Nielsen sells a block of ten ISBNs for around £164, or a single for about £91. If you plan more than one title, or you want bookshops to stock you, buy your own block.
The costs that are optional but usually worth it
| Service | Typical cost | Worth it when |
|---|---|---|
| Ghostwriting | £4,000–£15,000 | You have the material and the audience but not 300 hours |
| Audiobook production | £1,200–£3,500 | Non-fiction, memoir, or any book with a returning audience |
| Launch marketing | £800–£4,000 | You have a platform to amplify, or a clear commercial goal |
| Author website | £700–£2,500 | You intend to publish more than one book |
Three places authors reliably overspend
Paying for distribution you already get free. Amazon KDP and IngramSpark both cost nothing to set up. Any company charging you four figures for "global distribution" is charging you for an afternoon of admin.
Buying a large print run. Print-on-demand has no minimum order and no warehousing. Unless you have a confirmed bulk order — a corporate buyer, a conference — a print run of 1,000 copies is 1,000 copies in your garage.
Paying an ongoing royalty percentage. Some publishing services take 15–50% of your royalties permanently in exchange for work they did once. Over a book's life this is, in almost every case, far more than the one-off fee would have been.
So what is the realistic total?
For a finished manuscript you have written yourself, professionally published: £1,400 to £3,200. For a ghostwritten book from idea to publication: £6,000 to £14,000. For a full commercial launch including audio, website and marketing: £12,000 to £25,000.
Those are wide ranges because books are not standard products. Our cost calculator narrows it down in about thirty seconds, in your own currency.