How to self-publish a book in 2026: the step-by-step guide (ebook and print)

Before you start: is self-publishing right for this book?

Self-publishing is not the consolation prize for not getting an agent. It is a different deal: you keep the rights, the control and 35–90% of each sale (depending on the platform), and in exchange you run the production and the marketing. Traditional publishing pays an advance, takes the risk, and keeps 85–90% of sales; it also takes 12–24 months and accepts a small fraction of submissions. The honest test is not "is my book good enough" — it is "do I want to run a small publishing business for this book, or hand it over and wait?"

Two things make the decision easier. First, the routes are not exclusive: thousands of authors self-publish some books and sell others to publishers, and a self-published track record is now an asset, not a mark against you. Second, a self-published ebook is non-exclusive almost everywhere — you can take it down, re-price it or move it tomorrow. The only real one-way door is a full-service contract that takes rights, which is why the companies guide spends a section on vanity presses.

One more thing before a single pound is spent: decide what success means for this book, in a number. "Become a bestseller" is a dream; a publishing goal is measurable — a polished debut that starts a readership, a short expert guide that supports your business, an email list built ahead of a series launch, or a low-risk first book that teaches you the whole process. The goal shapes every later decision: a time-sensitive guide suits a fast, low-cost release, while a literary novel deserves the longer editing and beta-reading stage. Neither approach is better — the mismatch is what causes trouble.

Realistic budgets for one book, 2026

Spend bands are our synthesis of the 2025 EFA rate survey, Reedsy’s 2025 cover-design data and published UK package prices (see Sources). They are for a 60–90,000-word book.

The one timeline rule Book the editor first. Good editors are booked weeks out, the edit changes the blurb and sometimes the title, and the cover designer needs the final title and genre. Everything else fits around the edit.

Step 1: Finish the manuscript — then edit it properly

"Finished" means the story or argument is complete and you have done at least one full revision pass of your own. It also means a few trusted readers have told you where they got bored or confused. Only then is it worth paying for editing, because an editor working on a draft you are still restructuring is an expensive way to find out what you already suspected.

There are four kinds of professional editing, and you rarely need all four. Developmental editing looks at the whole book — structure, pacing, argument, character — and is the one most first books need and most first-time authors skip. Line editing works sentence by sentence on voice and clarity. Copyediting fixes grammar, consistency and house style. Proofreading is the final pass on the formatted file for typos. If you can afford one, buy the developmental edit and a proofread; if you can afford two, add a copyedit.

What editing costs (Editorial Freelancers Association 2025 rate survey, median ranges)

Medians for fiction from the EFA’s survey of its members, conducted November 2025 – January 2026; individual rates vary with experience, genre and turnaround. Many editors quote per project and come in below these medians for shorter books.

How to brief an editor (and not overpay)

• Ask for a sample edit of 1,000 words — every serious editor offers one, paid or free — and judge whether the notes make the book better rather than different.

• Say what you want fixed and what you want left alone (voice, dialect, deliberate fragments). A brief prevents a copyeditor from "correcting" your style.

• Send a clean file: one document, real heading styles for chapters, no tracked changes, no comments. Editors charge for the time your formatting costs them.

• Agree the deliverable: tracked changes plus an editorial letter for a developmental edit; tracked changes plus a style sheet for a copyedit.

If your budget is zero, run a structured self-edit instead. Read the book aloud (or have a text-to-speech voice read it to you), cut every scene that does not change something, and fix the top three problems your beta readers agree on. A free editing pass from a writing tool catches typos and repetition; it does not catch a saggy middle act, so use it last, not first.

Step 2: Get a cover that sells the book at thumbnail size

Readers decide in under a second, and they decide from a thumbnail the size of a postage stamp. A self-published cover has one job: to signal the genre clearly enough that the right reader clicks. That means looking at the top twenty books in your category and matching their visual language — typography, colour, composition — before trying to be original. A literary cover on a romance novel is the single most common reason a good book does not sell.

Professional design is the best money you will spend after editing. Reedsy’s analysis of more than 9,600 cover projects on its marketplace in 2025 put the average at $880, with most projects between $625 and $1,250. Nonfiction and thrillers sit at the lower end (medians around $700), fantasy and young adult at the top (around $900, with illustrated covers far above). For a print edition you also need a full wrap — spine and back — which is priced separately and needs the final page count for the spine width.

Designer, template, or AI?

• A designer is right when the book has commercial ambition, when you are building a series (covers must match), or when the genre is crowded. Brief them with five comparison covers and your blurb.

• A template tool is fine for a nonfiction ebook where a strong title treatment does the work, provided you buy the stock image licence and stay within the genre’s conventions.

• AI cover tools (Ebokio’s cover studio is one; there are several) are now good enough for ebook covers in many genres and cost almost nothing. But check the licence lets you use the output commercially, and still do the thumbnail test. Where AI art is a known reader turn-off (some romance and literary communities), say so or choose a designer.

Specs to send whichever route you take Ebook: 1,600 × 2,560 px (or any 1:1.6 ratio), RGB, JPEG or PNG under 5 MB, title readable at 100 px tall. Print: a PDF wrap built to the printer’s template for your trim size and page count, CMYK, 300 dpi, with bleed.

Step 3: Format the book — EPUB, DOCX and print interiors

An ebook is a reflowable document: the reader picks the font size and the text re-flows, so what you control is structure, not layout. Every ebook platform wants the same things — real heading styles so chapters are detected, a clickable table of contents, consistent paragraph styling, and images kept small. None of them wants hard page breaks or manual spacing masquerading as design. Most platforms, Ebokio included, accept either an EPUB you built yourself or a DOCX they convert; the EPUB vs DOCX guide explains when each is the better upload.

Print is the opposite: a fixed PDF where you control everything. Pick a standard trim size (5 × 8 in or 5.5 × 8.5 in for fiction; 6 × 9 in for most nonfiction; 129 × 198 mm for a UK B-format paperback). Set inside margins wider than outside ones to allow for the spine. Use a readable serif at 10.5–12 pt with comfortable leading, and start chapters on a new page. Free tools will do this well enough; paid typesetting (typically £150–£600) earns its keep on complex nonfiction.

Front and back matter checklist

1. Title page (title, subtitle, author name as it appears on the cover).

2. Copyright page: © year, author name, "All rights reserved", the edition, the ISBN if you have one, and "This is a work of fiction…" where it applies.

3. Table of contents (generated, not typed).

4. The book.

5. A short "About the author" with a link to your website or mailing list.

6. "Also by" — the single most effective page for selling the next book.

7. A one-line request for a review. Readers who finish are the readers who review.

Validate before you upload Open the EPUB in at least two readers (a phone app and a desktop app) and check the table of contents, chapter breaks, images and any special characters. A file that validates but renders badly on one device will generate the one-star review that says "formatting is broken".

Step 4: Write the metadata — the part of publishing that is also marketing

Metadata is everything the store knows about your book that is not the book: title and subtitle, the blurb, categories, keywords, series, author name, language, and age range. It decides which searches you appear in and which readers click, and it is the one part of self-publishing where a few hours of work has a measurable effect on sales for years.

The blurb is copy, not a synopsis. Open with the hook (the situation and what is at stake), give two or three short paragraphs, and end on the question the reader wants answered. For nonfiction, lead with the problem you solve and who it is for, then what they will be able to do afterwards. Keep it under 200 words and read it on a phone screen, where the first 30 words are all that shows before "read more".

• Categories: pick the most specific categories that honestly fit, not the broadest. A book that is number four in "Cozy animal mysteries" sells more than the same book at number four thousand in "Mystery".

• Keywords: phrases readers type, not adjectives you like — "enemies to lovers small town", "beginner sourdough", "WW2 historical fiction women". Seven short phrases beat one long one.

• Series: name the series and number the book even if book two is a plan. Series pages and "next in series" links are how backlist sells.

• Author name: decide on a pen name before you publish anything; changing it later orphans reviews. Ebokio supports multiple pen names on one account.

• Subtitle (nonfiction): this is where the search terms go. "The Lazy Gardener" is a title; "…: a no-dig guide to growing vegetables in a small UK garden" is findable.

Step 5: ISBN, imprint and rights — what you need and what you can skip

An ISBN is a product identifier for the book trade. You do not need one to sell an ebook on Amazon, Apple, Kobo or Ebokio — each platform assigns its own identifier. You do need one for any print edition you want bookshops, wholesalers or libraries to order. If you buy your own ISBN you are the publisher of record. If you accept a free one from a platform, that platform is, and the number cannot travel with the book to another printer. For a single ebook, skip it; for print, buy a block.

Prices depend on the country you publish from, because ISBN agencies are national. In the US, Bowker sells a single ISBN for $125 and a block of ten for $295 (a block is almost always the better buy, since every format needs its own number). UK prices from Nielsen are in the UK guide, along with the two UK-only obligations — legal deposit and VAT — that US guides never mention. The ISBN guide covers the edge cases.

Rights: what you are agreeing to when you click "publish"

On every reputable platform you grant a non-exclusive licence to sell the book in the formats you upload, you keep the copyright, and you can withdraw the book. Read three things in any agreement: whether it is exclusive (only KDP Select is, and only for ebooks, in 90-day terms), and what happens to your files and metadata if you leave. The third is whether the company can use your book for anything other than selling it — including training AI models. Ebokio’s agreement is non-exclusive, lets you remove a title at any time, and states that manuscripts are never used to train any AI model; check the equivalent clause wherever else you publish.

Step 6: Price the book — the royalty rules decide the answer

Pricing is the step where platform rules matter more than instinct, because every platform pays a different share at different price points. The full comparison is in the companies guide; the shape is this. The big ebook retailers pay around 70% inside a price band and much less outside it (Amazon pays 35% below $2.99 or above $9.99, and deducts a per-megabyte delivery fee on 70% sales). Aggregators take roughly a tenth on top, and retailer-platforms such as Ebokio pay a flat 70–90% of net receipts at any price.

Within those rules, price by genre and length. Novellas and first-in-series books sit low (£0.99–£2.99) to recruit readers; full-length genre fiction clusters at £2.99–£4.99; nonfiction that solves a specific problem carries £6.99–£14.99 comfortably. Round prices (£4.99 not £4.87) convert better, and a launch price you raise later gives early readers a reason to buy now. The pricing guide has the worked numbers, and the royalties guide shows exactly what lands in your account from a £4.99 sale.

Step 7: Choose where to publish — and whether to go exclusive

There are four kinds of company you can publish through, and most authors use two or three. Two of the four are retailers you upload to directly (Amazon KDP, Kobo, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble Press, Google Play) and aggregators that send one upload to many stores (Draft2Digital, PublishDrive, StreetLib). The other two are print-on-demand distributors for paperbacks (IngramSpark, Lulu) and retailer-platforms with their own bookshop (Kotobee Books, and Ebokio — which is ours). A typical 2026 setup for an English-language novel is KDP for Amazon, an aggregator or direct accounts for everyone else, and IngramSpark for print in shops. A non-exclusive platform like Ebokio sits alongside for the higher royalty and the extra storefront.

The exclusivity decision is really a decision about Kindle Unlimited. KDP Select puts your ebook into KU (paid per page read) in exchange for not selling the ebook anywhere else for 90 days at a time. It suits high-volume genre fiction where KU readers are a large share of the market; it suits nothing that sells through libraries, schools, or non-Amazon readers. You can opt out at the end of any 90-day term, so the common path is: launch wide, or launch in Select and go wide once the book has reviews.

Which kind of company does what

Platform facts are compared line by line, with sources and an as-of date, in the companies guide.

Step 8: Upload, pass review, go live

Every platform runs the same loop: create the title, upload the manuscript and cover, fill in the metadata, set the price and territories, preview, submit. Reviews are mostly automated at the big retailers and can take 24–72 hours. A human review catches formatting problems and content-policy issues before readers do. Ebokio does one for every title, typically within four to six working days on the Free plan and under twenty-four hours on Premium and Pro. Use the previewer on every platform: it is the last free chance to catch a broken chapter break.

The rejections that actually happen are boring and avoidable. They are a cover that does not match the title and author name in the metadata, a file with the wrong ISBN on the copyright page, and missing or wrong language settings. Two more are a blurb with HTML artefacts and — increasingly — a title or subtitle stuffed with keywords. Fix, resubmit, done. If a platform offers pre-orders, set one up a few weeks out: the listing exists for reviews and links before launch day, and pre-order sales count on release.

Then, before you announce anything, inspect the live product page the way a stranger would: the title spelled correctly everywhere, the cover sharp and correctly cropped at thumbnail size, the description readable on a phone, the price, author name and category right, the preview and purchase links working, and the ebook opening cleanly on more than one screen. Five minutes of this prevents the avoidable mistakes that make a first release look unfinished.

Publishing on Ebokio, specifically

1. Create a free account at publishing.ebokio.com — no card, no fee; Free accounts can publish up to thirty titles.

2. Upload an EPUB or DOCX. The built-in editor produces a clean, reader-ready EPUB and a downloadable file for buyers, which you can replace at any time.

3. Add the cover (yours, or one from the cover studio), the blurb, categories and keywords; an ISBN is optional and Ebokio does not issue them.

4. Set a price in pounds and see what you keep: 70% of net receipts on Free, 80% on Premium, 90% on Pro. Net receipts are the price minus the reader’s VAT and the card-processing fee — no delivery fees.

5. Submit for human review, then go live as a product page in the Ebokio bookshop. Earnings are paid at the end of the month two months after the sale month (£30 minimum, balances roll forward). How it works, in detail.

Step 9: Launch — the first ninety days

A launch is what you do in the three months around release, not the day itself. The aim is simple. You want enough early reviews that a stranger trusts the listing, and enough readers on a list you own that the second book launches to an audience. You also want a price and category that keep the book visible while that happens. Ads are optional and usually premature; a list and reviews are not.

1. Six weeks out: recruit 15–30 advance readers (friends of the genre, not friends) and send the finished file; ask for an honest review on release week. The book reviews guide covers where to find them and what you may and may not offer.

2. Four weeks out: set up the author website (one page is fine) and a mailing list with a free short story or chapter as the reason to join. Every platform profile and every back-matter page points at it.

3. Two weeks out: open pre-orders where available; confirm categories and keywords are live and correct; prepare five social posts that show the book rather than announce it.

4. Launch week: launch price at the low end of the genre band; email the list; ask the advance readers; reply to every review you may reply to.

5. Weeks 2–12: raise the price once reviews are in; try one promotional price drop through a newsletter service; check the categories weekly; and — above all — write the next book. Backlist is the only marketing that compounds.

What "success" looks like for a first self-published book Ten to thirty honest reviews, a few hundred sales across platforms in the first year, and a list of readers who want the next one. That is a normal, good outcome — and it is the base the second and third books build on. Treat anyone promising more for a fee as Step 5’s red flags apply.

What self-publishing a book costs in 2026 — the summary

Cost summary for one 80,000-word book

Figures as of 23 August 2026. Currencies follow the source; convert at the rate on the day.

The timeline, as a checklist

1. Week 0: finish the draft; one full self-revision; send to 3–5 beta readers.

2. Week 1: book the editor; brief the cover designer (or start the template/AI cover); decide on the pen name.

3. Weeks 2–5: edit; meanwhile write the blurb, pick categories and keywords, set up the author website and list.

4. Week 6: copyedit or proofread the final text; build the EPUB (and the print PDF); validate on two devices.

5. Week 7: choose platforms and the exclusivity decision; buy ISBNs if printing; set prices; create the listings; open pre-orders.

6. Week 8: send files to advance readers; schedule launch-week emails and posts.

7. Launch week: go live; launch price; ask for reviews.

8. Weeks 9–12: raise price; first promotion; start book two.