The self-publishing world is interesting in that there are some people out there who say spending even a dollar on putting your book out into the world is a waste.
And then there are people getting scammed by spending $10,000 on their first book with a scammy “publishing package”.
That’s a very wide spectrum of what people are willing to spend.
I’ll tell you what, it is a business and there are very few businesses in the world where you can launch with exactly zero dollars.
There are some worthy expenses such as developmental editing to make sure that your future books are very strong.
There are things like getting a pre-made cover to make sure your book fits within your genre.
There are other expenses like book descriptions or formatting – or anything under the sun that can make your books sell better.
And then, of course, there are paid marketing tactics such as Amazon advertising.
Now, I think I have seen that folks who are willing to spend $300 to $500 on a book are way more likely to sell copies of that book than people who spend below that.
And of course there is always an opportunity for bartering to get some cheaper editing services or to find someone who knows a cover designer, author networks are full of smart people.
And though you might have to be shrewd, I would recommend that in order to be successful with your first few books, it helps to at least spend a few hundred bucks to make your product more professional.