Hi, you mentioned having some resources for people considering Indie publishing? I would love to know more!
Hi! Yes!
So you mentioned not having a big budget, which was discouraging you from going the indie route, and I did a metric tonne of research before publishing Changeling, and came across a handful of really good, free resources so thought I could pass some along in case it's helpful!
The only thing I don't have a good, free, replacement for is an editor I'm afraid, but a robust series of self edits could work well, or possibly a kickstarter for the editing costs? Something to look into maybe.
If you do decide to run a kickstarter to cover your editing costs, I'd highly recommend the Facebook Group "Kickstarter for Authors", loads and loads of free advice can be found in there, but that's all I can really suggest since I've not run one myself.
When it comes to preparing a book for publication, however, I have a couple of helpful free or low-cost resources.
is Reedsy Book Formatter. Now, Reedsy recently updated their platform and pricing, so I just (24th May 2025) went in and checked if their formatter was still free to use. It is! You have to make a Reedsy account, or login with a Facebook or Gmail account. Additionally, there's lots of buttons suggesting their "paid features", which makes sense. However the formatter, and the ability to download your formatted manuscript either as a PDF (for Print Books aka Paperback or Hardcover) or an EPub (Ebooks) is still a free function. The only 'catch' to the Reedsy formatter is that, on the bottom of the Copyright Page, they will input something like "Formatted with Reedsy Free Formatter" or something along those lines. I don't remember exactly. I was on a bit of an ego trip when I was researching my debut novel, so that was a No-go for me and I saved up and paid for Atticus to format my books, but that's NOT budget friendly and runs about $147, but I digress. Once you HAVE a formatted Book File — and if it's a PDF for Paperback, you know how many pages your book will be, then next expense is going to be a Cover. You can make your own book cover, but unless you're (A) A graphic Designer and (B) have your thumb on the pulse of the book cover market in your genre, I wouldn't recommend it. What I would recommend is...
Getcover Design Services. Getcovers are a professional design company based in Ukraine, and they designed the cover for my Reader Magnet "Whatever Happened to Madeline Hail?" and my debut novel, "Changeling" (I'll put pictures of the covers below.) Getcovers has a sister company called Miblart, which charges a closer-to-market-average for their design services, although still cheaper than many designers. I have NO PROOF of the following statement, but I suspect the designers at Getcovers are new with the company, and being trained up, before they're moved over to Miblart. Again, I have no proof of this, it's only a suspicion on my part. And that's NOT to say I have any complaints over Getcovers quality. What I would say is that, being based in Ukraine, somethings a little bit of back and forth is required before the designer understands what you're looking for. (In one particularly memorable moment, I ended up doing a mockup in MSPaint, and that seemed to solve ALL communication issues lol) But, on the flip side, all of Getcovers cover design packages come with unlimited revisions, so as long as you have a bit of patience, they're well worth it. Which brings me to cost. Getcovers isn't free, of course, but in my humble opinion they might as well be. Getcovers will design an Ebook Only Cover for $10. They will design an Ebook & Paperback Cover for $20. They have a premium service, for detailed covers, which is a Ebook & Paperback for $35. If you want a Hardcover Design added on, that's an additional $10. It's not free, but you cannot buy a PREMADE cover for that price. It's a little bit insane. Getcovers over other design services as well, such as author branding (My author branding was developed by them as well), marketing materials, and merchandise design, but again, I digress.
Finally, uploading your files. You have self edited as best you can, you've formatted your book, and you have your cover files. Now, all that's left to do is upload the book for sale somewhere. This is, honestly, the easiest part. Draft2Digital is a free platform to upload your books. They are a distributor, which means they take a small cut of your royalties for doing all the labour of sending your book out to a dozen other storefronts, but for ease of use, and time saved, it's a negligable amount (10% if I remember correctly). KDP or Kindle Direct Publishing is basically Amazon. You CANNOT have more than ONE KDP account, so if you're not sure if you've made a KDP account before, I'd reach out to customer service and check if you have a KDP account linked to your Amazon account. They'll be happy to let you know if that's the case, before you try making a new account and end up in hot water. But, essentially, it's also free to upload your book to KDP. When it comes to your EBook on KDP you have a choice between exclusive and wide. If you want to upload your Ebook to other platforms like Draft2digital, you CANNOT put your Ebook into Kindle Unlimited (aka KU). This is because Amazon requires exclusive rights to your book, so if it's uploaded anywhere else, they'll kick up a fuss. I've never had my books in KU, I prefer to keep Changeling widely available so take this next part with a pinch of salt, but I THINK KU is a 90day rolling contract. So you can have your book in KU for 90 days, and then choose to go wide. It's more difficult to be Wide, and THEN go KU, because you have to pull your book from all storefronts and make sure it's not available anywhere before putting it back into KU. The only "Cost" of publishing on KDP is if you decide to have a paperback or hardcover book, and want them to print a physical proof copy. This is a recommended step to make sure the files all uploaded correctly, however it's not a requirement. And if you do decide to print a proof, it's not too expensive. I think Changeling, which is a 5.5x8.5 trim, 399 pages, usually costs me less than $12 If you decide to publish Wide, and no Exclusive to Amazon, then other storefronts I recommend uploading to directly, instead of through Draft2Digital are Barnes & Noble, Googlebooks, and Kobo. Itch.io is also free to upload to, and is beginning to pick up steam with Ebooks! You can also turn on tips, so people can choose to pay you more than the book price is set to. The only 'Downside' to Itch.io is that is has a minimum withdrawl cost, which I THINK is $10 before you can have it paid out to your paypal account. Again, I'm pulling those numbers from memory, so I might be off a little. But, essentially, you can publish an Ebook for as little as $10, and a paperback for as little as... what... $45? Tops? I know that's still a handful of cash, but it's much, much, more reasonable than initial research suggests when you start looking into it <3 I hope ANY of this helped!!
EDIT!! I forgot to add the covers for "Whatever Happened To Madeline Hail?" and "Changeling" for examples of Getcovers work!!