We talk a lot about print books when we mention custom book publishing, but there’s no doubt that ebooks have been on the rise for years. They haven’t risen quite as much as digital enthusiasts would probably like, but they are an option you should consider for your book.
Why Go Digital?
About a quarter of your readers would like an ebook.
While the ebook market waned in 2016, a significant share of readers read digital books on tablets, smartphones, and ereaders—28 percent, according to Pew. To put this in perspective, this is versus the 65 percent who read print books and 14 percent who listen to audiobooks.
What’s Involved with an Ebook
If you choose to do an ebook, you can avoid some of the cost of a print book. With the copyediting process done and a cover design completed, the time spent on an ebook is for development. That’s a catch-all term to cover coding, CSS styling, lots of reviewing of the text for bad breaks and formatting lost in the transition between the print files and the ebook development platform, and testing in the different ereader environments.
Because each ereader displays its ebooks a little differently, we try to simplify the layout of your ebook as much as possible. The more complex the layout, the more likely something will break on different ereaders. Text-only books are a natural fit for ebooks.
Your ebook is assigned a unique ISBN (different from your print book), and you end up with files you can use for Kindle, iBooks, and Nook.
If you’re doing an ebook from the beginning, you’ll need to figure in the time for copyediting and cover design, where, as we’ve explained for print books, your mileage will vary based on page count and other factors.
Ballpark Estimate
While it’s difficult to provide an average cost for ebook development, we can give you ballpark numbers based on ebooks we’ve done before. An book done to accompany a print book is usually between $500 and $1,500. An ebook-only book project can be as little as $500 and as much as $3,000. There are projects that will be outside of these ranges, of course.
Let us know if you’re interested in doing an ebook. We’ll gladly talk with you about your book and provide you with an estimate once we understand more about your manuscript and your needs.
