Indie-publishing on a shoestring – how to get your book out there in paperback and e-book for just a few pounds: what they don’t want you to know

To indie-publish or not? (Revised 2026)

When I finally gave up sending The Evergreen in red and white to agents and publishers, and got sick of the lack of even the smallest courtesy of a reply, I was faced with a decision: do I bin several thousand hours of work or do I somehow go ahead anyway? Indie-publishing is growing, but it is still better in my opinion if you can get a publisher – it is not an easy option going it alone, especially if you are serious. The mainstream publishing industry still hold nearly all the cards when it comes to getting publicity and exposure. On your own you are left with a hard slog unless you get lucky.

     This is a tough decision for a writer – and at this stage you must recognise that you are probably suffering a combination of elation at ‘finishing’ your project, dejection that it hasn’t made the Booker shortlist by now, paranoia, resentment and confusion. In short you are in no position to make that decision. You should therefore rely on the smartest, most honest people you know and ask them to help. It is possible after all that what you have produced is a pile of shite and that the best thing all round for your sanity is to start again on another book, treating that as a rehearsal (plenty of writers do that) or just to accept that you write to give pleasure to yourself and/or those around you and leave it at that.  It is a totally saturated market and margins for authors have plumetted. If books has gone up in price with inflation a typical mainstream paperback novel that cost £7.99 in the 80s should retail for around £18. The only ones maintaining their margins are the big publishers.

     You need to know if what you have written is worth anyone paying good money for. After all, there are too many books now being published. Your book may have been rejected by the publishing industry but it still may be as good in its niche, if it has one, as mainstream published books. You need people to tell you what is wrong with your book – you don’t want friends to tell you it is marvellous. Ask them to be honest and to tell you how it can be improved. (You should already have done this before you sent it out to agents, but before you embark on indie-publishing you need that honesty.) Let’s be a bit brutal: as well as some corkers, there are some truly awful self-published books out there. Do you really want to add to that stinking pile?

     Right, so you’ve decided there is some merit in publishing your work. First of all you need a budget. What is realistic for how many copies can you sell? If you are lucky a few hundred in the first year is possible. You may expect to make about £1.25 on an e-book or between £1.50 – £ 2.00 on a paperback depending on how you sell it: so don’t give up your day job. There are plenty of sharks out there who will be happy to help you, happy to charge you for proof-reading, typesetting, editing, setting the whole thing up on Kindle, designing a cover, advertising, tweeting on your behalf etc. etc. So, balance your outlay against realistic income. (Of course you could just gamble that you are the next E L James, or you could spend £1000 on lottery tickets which might be a safer bet.)

     As well as some sharks there are also some indie-publishing heroes out there to help you avoid expensive mistakes: without them I couldn’t have hoped to get The Evergreen off the ground. I started from the point of view that I wanted to avoid the label of “vanity publishing.” That meant making, not throwing away, money – even if the target was no more than to at least break even, and then any ‘beer and skittles’ money generated on top of that was a bonus. The good news its that you do not have to spend a penny to get indie-published. Not one.

Here’s how:

Editing and proof-reading. 

This is something you should have done before you even sent it to agents, really. Once you’ve finished your draft, put it to one side and forget about it for as long as you can: at least 6 months I reckon. Then read it aloud to yourself: if you stumble over sentences they probably need a re-write. Get your smart, literate friends, or even better, friends of friends, to read it and tell you what is wrong with it. Then once you’ve edited it, read it again. Then read it again. And again, and again. I was still finding mistakes in The Evergreen after about 8 reads – and they are still there in the final thing – damn! One way to do it is to put it onto your Kindle (see below). (If you haven’t got a Kindle that is probably a necessary expenditure). However, early on, it is probably best printing off a copy and scribbling on it as you go. You can do this through Lightning Source/ Ingram Spark for around £10.

Learn how to format an e-book. 

This sounds scary but here the first hero comes to your rescue: Guido Henkel: http://guidohenkel.com/2010/12/take-pride-in-your-ebook-formatting/ , Notepad ++ http://notepad-plus-plus.org/ , and Calibre http://calibre-ebook.com/ (These people are heroes, they make their stuff available for free. Once you start making money, perhaps consider putting some their way, or make a donation to them up front so that they can continue their work.) Some people use Amazon’s own KDP software to upload  Word documents. Some people advise against this as the formatting on these can look poor. (However, some say that it works for them.) Perhaps it depends on how tight your use of Word is and whether you want anything fancy doing. The conversion software is getting better. Have a look at some e-books out there: you could look at The Evergreen: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Evergreen-red-white-Steven-ebook/dp/B00I0F78VQ/ref=pd_rhf_pe_p_img_6  : download the sample to your Kindle.  Compare those to something like (taking a book at random, that I know nothing about – it could be a great read for all I know): http://www.amazon.co.uk/Englewood-Fireside-Tales-Jean-Airey-ebook/dp/B003DQPLL6/ref=sr_1_38?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1415358478&sr=1-38

     It is worth the effort to get it right: you may be taking a DIY approach but there is no reason you can’t do a better job than many of the lazily produced commercially published e-books (see my review of Ours Are the Streets for example at: http://stevek1889.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/sheffield-novels.html )

    Have a look at Guido Henkel’s stuff and then have a play with your book on Notepad++ and Calibre. Follow Henkel’s instructions on cleaning up your formatting and transferring your text to the programme editor (I used Notepad ++ but there are others). Deal with your special characters as described (if you need a £ sign you need: £ by the way. ) Clean up your formatting on Word first using the find and replace facility, before pasting it into your editor. Find rogue spaces at the end of paragraphs for example with: find: press space bar then type ^p and replace with just ^p
     To then turn it into an HTML file you need to wrap the text with HTML headers etc. You can even make up your own <p> tags. Try cutting and pasting the following at the start of you Notepad++ document instead of what Henkel has:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

  <head>

    <style type="text/css">

      html, body, div, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, ul, ol, dl, li, dt, dd, p, pre, table, th, td, tr { margin: 0; padding: 0em; }

 p

{

  text-indent: 1.5em;

  margin-bottom: 0em;

}

p.first

{

  text-indent: 0em;

  margin-bottom: 0em;

}

p.firstlone

{

  text-indent: 0em;

  margin-bottom: 1.2em;

}

p.extragap

{

  text-indent: 1.5em;

  margin-bottom: 10.2em;

}

p.chapter
{
  text-indent: 1.5em;
  font-weight: bold;
  font-size: 1.5em;
  page-break-before: always;
  margin-top:3em;
  margin-bottom:1em;
}

p.sub

{

  text-indent: 1.5em;

  font-weight: bold;

  font-size: 1.5em;

  margin-top:0em;

  margin-bottom:2em;

}

p.newpage

{

  text-indent: 0em;

  font-weight: bold;

  font-size: 1.5em;

  page-break-before: always;

  margin-top:3em;

  margin-bottom:2em;

}

p.centered

{

  text-indent: 0em;

  text-align: center;

}

span.centered

{

  text-indent: 0em;

  text-align: center;

}

p.titlepage

{

  text-indent: 0em;

  font-weight: bold;

  font-size: 3em;

  text-align: center;

  page-break-before: always;

  margin-top:5em;

  margin-bottom:2em;

}

p.indent
{
  text-indent: 3.0em;
  margin-bottom: 0em;

}
    </style>

  </head>

  <body>
(PUT YOUR TEXT IN HERE}
</body>

I don't always use all the <p> tags in each of the books I've done, but I'll try and explain what I use them for. Some of these I made up and they seem to work (a proper programmer will probably have kittens though) :

<p class = “first”> removes the first line indent from the first paragraph after a heading or a * gap (like in a proper book).

<p class = “sub”> allows a subheading under a chapter number without showing up on the contents list

<p class="firstlone"> allows a paragraph on its own left-aligned, with a gap afterwards – so for a first left-aligned paragraph where you want a break in the story after that first para.

 <p class="centered"><span class="centered">*</span></p> This places an asterix in the middle of the page. It is best to follow that with left-aligned text for the first paragraph

<p class="titlepage"> creates a titlepage: the title on its own on a page.

The following example lets me end the page with "...fill me again" then start "Rab Howell...perhaps" on a new page half way down in italics:

<p class="extragap">On Good Friday 1898, Sheffield United beat Bolton 1-0. Sunderland lost to Bury by the same score and Sheffield United secured the English Championship for the only time in their history… so far. Come fill me again!</p>

<p class="newpage"></p>

<p><i>Rab Howell… perhaps ........................

This is the start of the book, following straight on after the HTML header above:

<p class="titlepage">The Evergreen in red and white</p>

<p class="newpage"></p>

<p class="first">First published in 2013 by 1889 books.</p>

<p class="first">Copyright © Steven R Kay 2013.</p>

<p class="first">The moral right of the author has been asserted.</p>

<p class="first">Cover: Greg Whitmore and Steven Kay.</p>

<p class="first">This e-book is licensed for your personal use only – it should not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you are reading this book and did not pay for it, please purchase your own copy – thanks for respecting the hard work and thousands of hours that the author put into researching and writing this. </p>

<p class="chapter">Author’s Note</p>

<p class="first">In 1894 Rabbi Howell became the first Romany to play football for England. I have never believed the accounts in the club’s history books of what happened in 1897-98: a pivotal season for him. My research led to what I believe to be as close to the truth as is possible. This is a fictional account based on what facts that can be gleaned.</p>

<p>The glossary contains Romany and dialect words, should the reader wish to know exact meanings.</p>

<p class="chapter"> </p>

<i>I don’t know exactly what Howell is made of, but he is an acrobat and I believe if he were standing on his head he would somehow get his kick in, and the ball would be picked up by one of his side.  – Free Critic, Athletic News, January 1898<p></i>

 <p class="chapter">CHAPTER ONE</p>

 <p class="firstlone">Saturday 17th April 1897</p>

 <p class="first"><strong><big><big>Rab</big></big></strong> took the little…

An extra gap can be added after a paragraph by adding </br>  at the end of a paragraph after the </p>.

Uploading an Epub file to other platforms than KDP can be a little frustrating (and there is a known glitch that crops up in your Calibre EPUB that gets it kicked out and needs manually correcting - -too complicated for here, maybe another post). The Notepad++ version of you book needs to be very clean before it will be accepted: it is worth doing this even if just uploading an EPUB file to KDP. Down the left hand side of your screen there are may be little minus signs. Look out for these and eliminate them: every line needs to open with <p> and end with a </p>. If you have blocks of italics running over more than one paragraph, each paragraph needs tagging. Eliminate empty lines and any lines which are just "<p></p>" - these may appear for some reason. Get rid of  lines with carriage spaces at the end: within Notepad++ you can search for {space}</p> and replace with just </p> (Word won't let you do this). Uploading to Dtraft2Digital (ex Smashwords) will also not like filenames uploading with spaces between words in the file name: rename it just before uploading it. And you should follow their copyright page guide.

Once you have uploaded onto Calibre and created an e-book you can put it straight onto your Kindle to check it.

See post: http://stevek1889.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/how-to-insert-pictures-to-mobi-file.html for how to include pictures in your e-book.

I will also do another post on endnotes/footnotes.

3) Getting a paperback published.

Lightning Source/Ingram Spark is becoming the go-to platform for producing a paperback (the main alternative is Amazon KDP). Both are now free to use and upload your book. (Retailers want at least 50%, so on a £10 paperback the retailer gets get £5 leaving your profit as the difference between printing costs and £5 – that makes it very tight to turn a profit, but you can perhaps squeeze about £1.80-2.00 per book). 

      You need to teach yourself how to format a book, this can be done on Word or free software like Apache Open-Office: https://www.openoffice.org/ can be useful and exporting as a PDF seems to work well. You could of course pay for software such as InDesign or Adobe writer (but why would you unless you are a professional?). Recently Canva have made Affinity free to use, it is a great platform for producing a picture book and quite intuitive. Study paperback books you like and see how they are laid out. This is what you are aiming to replicate. Paste your document into Open Office docs and then start fiddling. I suggest you set it up with two pages per screen: recto and verso. The Evergreen is not my ideal layout: it is rather densely set out, the font is size 11, using Garamond, which is quite economical with space, and the margins are as squeezed as I could make them: but at about 105,000 words, and in order to keep costs down, I had no option: more pages more cost. It is a struggle to keep a paperback under £10. Opting for a 6 x 9 inch format helps keep costs down..
     Amazon's KDP platform is an alternative that I have used for, for example, print versions of Spirit of Old Essex and A Skipper's Wooing. It depends how many you think you can shift as to how the economics stack up. You can also use their cover design templates: though they often don't look great unless you have some design experience to draw on yourself. The advantage of Amazon is that they will distribute to their own platform using a free ISBN, but that won't get you distribution on other platforms or in bookshops.
     For Lightning Source you have to provide your own ISBN numbers: this costs £174 for a bundle of 10 (or £93 for just one!) from Nielsen. How the economics work out depend on whether you propose to indie-publish more than once.  Ingram no longer charge a set-up fee so it has become the best option for all indie-publishing, in my view. They are very good at delivering books and it is set up on Amazon by them quite efficiently - you can order a dozen books at little more extra cost per item than 1000. No more depressing boxes of books! You can rejoice in every sale rather than have stock whispering to you how crap you are every time you go near the boxes..

4) You can’t judge a book by its cover

But everyone does.

A cover has one second to convey all of these in 1/2 second on a phone screen:

Genre, fiction/ non-fiction
Target age range
Mood
Timeframe
Place (outer space, Africa, Ancient Rome)

This might be the one area worth spending a bit of money on. But it can also be effective just using simple desktop publishing: The Skipper’s Wooing, Spirit of Old Essex, Put Yourself in His Place and Joe Stepped off the Train were all done on Open Office Draw, for example. Affinity is now my go-to platform for cover designing: it has some great features. You should download Derek Murphy's guide even if you are getting help with the cover: https://www.creativindie.com/7-book-cover-design-secrets-to-sell-more-books/ There also are cover design templates out there that you can use if you: see for example: http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2013/10/20/book-cover-design-ms-word/ 

     Another website worth looking at for all matters self-publishing is: http://www.thebookdesigner.com/

5) As you approach publication you need to start thinking about publicity, so that you can hit the ground running. This is hard work and not very satisfying. You have to tout yourself and your wares using whatever means possible: no one else will do it for you. There are no easy answers to how to do this. It is the Holy Grail for all indies. There is loads of information out there on this and it can be overwhelming - however it is worth doing some research. 

    I suggest setting up a website (I used Wix.com which is very easy to use for anyone with a bit of computer knowledge: it is very intuitive. Postscript - because it is not renowned for its ethical policy I am not sure I would now start from there, if starting over.) You should also consider spending a few pounds getting your own domain name: that way search engines are more likely to find you. Use Twitter, Facebook, other social media, and a blog. Look for any openings that make you book special: every book has its own audience and possible openings. Search around for people that will do reviews for free in your genre. You may have to budget for sending out some free copies. Learn how to do a professional looking press release. 

    Suss out your local media. Try and get local radio interviews if there is something newsworthy about your book: the launch, or a relevant anniversary or whatever. See also David Gaughran’s: Let Get Visible which has some useful ideas ( http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/ )
     Above all persist. You need to keep it up for long enough for word of mouth to start working for you – you need to keep chucking it in the air and you have to hope that if the book is strong enough it will eventually fly on its own (I’ll let you know if any of mine ever do!) Good luck with yours.