How it works
The route exists. It is just exhausting.
Anyone can publish a book today without a publisher’s permission. That is genuinely new and genuinely good. What nobody says out loud is how many separate skilled jobs stand between a finished manuscript and a book somebody can buy — and that every one of them is a place where a person without money or time quietly gives up.
What the platforms actually give you
The large self-publishing platforms are not villains in this story. They solved distribution, which was the hard part, and they did it without asking anyone’s permission either. It is worth being precise about what they offer, because the precision is what most advice leaves out.
Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing
Two ebook royalty rates: 35% of list price worldwide, or 70% in a defined set of about 34 countries, with a per-megabyte delivery cost deducted. The 70% rate is confined to a price band — long $2.99–$9.99, and widened to $2.99–$12.99 from July 2026 — and requires the ebook to be priced at least 20% below any physical edition.1
What that means in practice: Amazon decides the price band in which you are allowed to earn a living wage per copy, and it can move it.
Barnes & Noble Press
A flat 70% ebook royalty on the list price with no price bands — a $0.99 ebook and a $14.99 ebook earn the same share. Print is roughly 55% of list less printing cost. Free to open an account and free to publish, no exclusivity required, payment once $25 has accrued.2
Smaller audience than Amazon, better terms at low prices, and print-on-demand into the B&N stores.
IngramSpark
The route into the actual book trade: distribution to tens of thousands of retailers, libraries and universities, which is how a self-published book gets onto a physical bookshop’s ordering system at all. Retailers require a minimum 55% wholesale discount on distributed titles as of August 2024, and there is a market access fee on the local list price.3
Its title set-up and revision fees have changed more than once and sources disagree on the current figure, so check their own pricing page rather than anyone’s summary — including this one.
The aggregators
Draft2Digital and Kobo Writing Life push one uploaded file out to Apple Books, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Scribd, library systems and others, taking a cut in exchange for never having to learn six dashboards.
Convenience against margin. For most authors that trade is worth it, right up until the point where somebody automates the six dashboards.
Add it up and the distribution problem really is solved. An unknown writer in a small town can reach the same storefronts as a Random House author, this afternoon, for nothing. That is an extraordinary thing that we have somehow got used to.
The problem is everything before the upload.
The real gate
Twelve jobs stand between your manuscript and your book.
None of them is writing. Each of them is a professional trade with a professional rate. This is the list that turns “anyone can publish” into “anyone with a few thousand dollars and six months can publish”.
1. Structural edit
Does the book work? Is chapter nine in the right place? Is there a book here at all, or two half-books?
2. Line & copy edit
Sentence by sentence. Consistency of names, dates, tense, spelling convention, and every fact you half-remembered.
3. Proofread
The last pass, on the typeset pages, where the errors that survived everything else finally show themselves.
4. Interior typesetting
Margins, running heads, widows and orphans, chapter openers, front and back matter, and a different set of all of it for print and for reflowable ebook.
5. Cover design
Front, spine and back, to the printer’s exact trim and spine width, legible as a thumbnail two centimetres tall.
6. Metadata & categories
Title, subtitle, contributors, description, keywords, BISAC subject codes, audience, territory rights. Get these wrong and the book is invisible.
7. ISBNs
One per format, administered, registered, and recorded against the right imprint so the book exists to the trade.
8. Format conversion
Print-ready PDF, EPUB that validates, a web edition, and each one re-made whenever the text changes by a comma.
9. Accessibility
Proper heading structure, alt text, reading order, language tags. Increasingly a legal requirement, and always the right thing.
10. Distribution set-up
A separate account, a separate form and a separate set of rules at every retailer, each changing without notice.
11. Audiobook
Historically the single most expensive line on the budget: studio, narrator, engineer, proof-listen.
12. A place to send people
A page that is yours, that outlives any retailer, where the book can be read, linked and cited.
That is the gate. Not taste, not merit, not talent — capital and stamina. A publisher’s advance is, in large part, simply the money to pay this list. Which is why the writer without an advance, and without savings, does not get through it.
What we automate
One manuscript in. A published book out.
You send us a manuscript in whatever you wrote it in — Word, Pages, Markdown, Google Docs, a folder of chapters. What comes back is a book, in every format, on every shelf you chose, under your own name and your own rights.
Done for you, automatically
- Copy-edit and proofread pass, with every change shown to you for approval — never applied silently
- Typeset print interior and a reflowing ebook from the one source
- Cover, built to the printer’s exact trim and spine
- EPUB, print-ready PDF, and a permanent web edition
- Metadata, BISAC categories, keywords and jacket copy drafted for your approval
- ISBN registration for each format
- Accessibility structure and alt text
- Audiobook edition
- Store listings prepared for Amazon KDP, B&N Press, IngramSpark and the aggregators
Still yours, always
- Your copyright. We take no rights in your work, exclusive or otherwise, ever.
- Your royalties. Paid by the retailer to you. We are not in the payment path.
- Your accounts. Where a store allows it, the book is published under your account, not ours.
- Your readers. Your list, your correspondence, your relationships.
- Your exit. Ask, and you get every source file we hold — manuscript, cover, EPUB, PDF, metadata. Leaving costs nothing.
What a human still does — and what we will not pretend
A machine cannot tell you whether your book is good, who it is for, or why chapter nine is not working. It cannot build you an audience. It cannot make anyone read you. Those are the parts that have always been hard and they are still hard.
What we can promise is narrower and, we think, more useful: the reason your book goes unread will never be that you could not afford a typesetter.
Notes
- Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, “Digital Book Pricing Page” and “eBook List Price Requirements.” The 70% royalty is 70% × (list price − VAT − delivery costs); the 35% royalty is 35% × (list price − VAT) with no delivery deduction and worldwide territory. Delivery costs run from about $0.01 to $0.15 per megabyte depending on store. kdp.amazon.com ↩
- Barnes & Noble Press, publishing terms and royalty payment terms. press.barnesandnoble.com · royalty terms ↩
- IngramSpark pricing and distribution terms, including the minimum 55% wholesale discount on distributed titles effective 31 August 2024 and the market access fee. Fee figures quoted by third parties conflict; the primary page is the one to trust. ingramspark.com/pricing · current price sheet (PDF) ↩
Platform terms change often. Everything here was checked on 26 September 2026 and each claim links to the platform’s own page so you can check it again.