How Much Does It Cost to Publish a Book in the UK?

Short answer: publishing a book on Amazon KDP is free. What costs money is the help you buy. For an 80,000-word novel, in prices re-read on 5 November 2026:

• Everything yourself: about £4, the price of one proof copy, plus delivery.
• The usual first book (a proofread, a professional cover, professional formatting): about £1,300 to £1,900.
• Full professional production (developmental edit, copyedit, proofread, cover and typesetting at freelance-marketplace averages): about £6,300.
• A UK publishing company covering some of the same work: £215 to £7,500, with printed stock and marketing at the top end (compared in the best self-publishing companies in the UK).
• A traditional publisher: nothing. It pays for production, but it chooses which books it takes.

Use the calculator for your own book. Every price in it is a published price with a date, and ours come from the same list as our order page.

Would you rather someone else did it? Our book formatting services UK start at £69, VAT included, with files back in 24 hours.

What each part costs

The table uses the prices each firm publishes. Many editors and designers only quote per project, so real quotes can be higher or lower. Our editor cost guide lists every provider price we found, with CIEP’s suggested minimum hourly rates, and the cover cost guide does the same for covers.

Four real budgets for an 80,000-word novel

All four use the prices above, KDP’s free ISBN unless stated, and one proof copy (£4.15 to print, plus delivery).

The “careful first book” is where we would point most first-time authors. Paying the top published proofreading price instead (£19.79 per 1,000 words with VAT) takes it to £1,905. Readers notice a weak cover and typos far more than they notice a missing developmental edit, and you can afford a better edit on book two once book one is selling.

What UK self-publishing companies charge

Companies that sell a publishing package bundle the same parts together. These are the prices they publish:

A package is not a rip-off by default. It suits authors who want one company to handle everything and don’t mind paying for the convenience. Our guide to self-publishing packages goes through what they include. Before you sign, ask what each part of the fee pays for, and check it against the warning signs in our vanity publishing guide.

Do you have to pay to publish a book?

No. There are three routes, and only some of them cost money:

• Traditional publisher. It pays for editing, design and printing and pays you a royalty, often with an advance. You pay nothing, but it chooses which books it takes, usually through a literary agent.
• Self-publishing. You are the publisher. KDP is free, and you pay only for the help you choose.
• A paid publishing company. You pay it to do the work. That can be a fair deal, but if a firm calling itself a publisher asks for money, you are its customer, so read the contract as one.

Where the money should go

Spend on the weakest part of the book first.

1. The manuscript isn’t ready. Editing comes before everything. A cheap cover can be replaced in an afternoon; a book full of errors collects one-star reviews that stay on the listing. At minimum, get a proofread.
2. The writing is good but the cover isn’t. Fix the cover. Put yours next to the top ten in your Amazon category, as thumbnails. If it looks homemade there, it will sell like it.
3. The book is finished but the files fight you. Pay for formatting, or use a tool that checks the file for you. KDP rejections, lost italics and blank pages cost more in time than £69 costs in money.
4. Everything is ready. Then spend on getting seen: a launch, reviews, or ads with a budget you can afford to lose while you learn.

The costs, part by part

Publishing on Amazon KDP is free

KDP charges nothing to publish an ebook, paperback or hardback. For a paperback, Amazon takes the printing cost out of each sale instead: 60% of the list price at £7.99 or more, minus printing. The KDP royalty calculator shows what you would earn per copy at your price.

ISBNs: free is often fine

For a KDP paperback or hardback you can use KDP’s free ISBN or buy your own. KDP’s free ISBN can only be used on KDP, and the imprint shows as “Independently published”. A Kindle ebook doesn’t need an ISBN. Buy your own (£93 for one, £174 for ten from Nielsen, including VAT) if you want your own imprint name, or plan to sell the same edition through IngramSpark or a UK printer too. More in ISBN rules for UK authors.

Editing: the biggest and most variable cost

“Editing” is four different jobs: developmental (does the book work?), line (does each sentence work?), copyediting (is it correct and consistent?) and proofreading (the last error check on the finished text). The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) publishes suggested minimum rates from £31.92 an hour for proofreading to £42.66 for developmental editing. Grosvenor House quotes proofreading from £6 per 1,000 words, but only for authors publishing with it. A very low price per word can be fine for a final check, but ask how the work gets done. Always ask for a sample edit of a chapter before you commit.

Cover design: two jobs, not one

A cover has to meet KDP’s technical rules (size, bleed, spine, barcode space) and look as good as the bestsellers next to it. The first is arithmetic; our KDP cover calculator does it and gives you a template. The second is what you pay a designer for. Don’t commission the print wrap until your page count is final, or the spine will be wrong.

Formatting: free tool, software or done for you

A plain novel can be formatted in a free tool if you’re willing to learn it and check every page. Books with images, tables, footnotes or poetry are where paid help earns its fee. Our prices: paperback £69, paperback and Kindle £119, plus other ebook shops £179, picture books £219. Or do it yourself in our Book Studio for £29.99, which checks the file against KDP’s rules before you upload. See book formatting costs in the UK for everyone else’s prices.

Printing: print on demand means no stock

With KDP’s print on demand, each copy is printed when someone orders it, so you never pay for boxes of books in advance. You only pay for proof and author copies. If you want copies to sell at events, compare short-run printers on the cost per usable copy, including delivery and storage. Our Doxzoo vs Mixam comparison has current UK prices.

Distribution: KDP reaches bookshops too

KDP’s Expanded Distribution makes eligible paperbacks available to bookshops and libraries. It depends on trim size and paper, and hardcovers can’t use it. It makes the book orderable, not stocked. If UK bookshops are central to your plan, read KDP vs IngramSpark for UK authors.

VAT

HMRC zero-rates printed books and ebooks. Audiobooks are standard-rated. If you sell direct, the VAT registration threshold is £90,000 of taxable turnover. Check HMRC’s guidance or an accountant for your own case.

Marketing: free costs time

No book needs an ad budget to launch. The free work that sells books is an email list, a strong Amazon description, reviews from real readers, and people who already serve your readers. Paid ads speed up learning, but only once the cover and description convert. Buying traffic to a listing that doesn’t convert just proves it doesn’t convert.

Fees I would question before paying

Ask exactly what work sits behind each line of a quote, especially:

• an “ISBN fee” for an ISBN you won’t own;
• “distribution” that is really just an upload to your KDP account;
• formatting that covers print but not the ebook;
• how many revision rounds are included;
• a “cover” that only resizes your own picture;
• who owns the editable files at the end;
• any share of your royalties, now or later. (For one written example, our Spines review quotes a service whose terms keep 30% of net royalties.)

A good supplier answers all of these without jargon.

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to publish a book in the UK?

Publishing on Amazon KDP is free. For an 80,000-word novel, doing everything yourself costs about £4 for one proof copy plus delivery. A proofread, a professional cover and professional formatting cost about £1,300 to £1,900. Full professional editing, cover and typesetting at freelance-marketplace averages comes to about £6,300.

How much does it cost to publish a book on Amazon UK?

Nothing to publish. KDP has no set-up fee and gives you a free ISBN for print. Amazon takes the printing cost from each paperback sale; a 330-page black-and-white paperback costs £4.15 to print in the UK.

Do you have to pay to publish a book?

No. KDP charges no set-up fee, and a traditional publisher pays for production itself. You pay only if you choose to buy editing, design or a publishing package. If a company calling itself a publisher asks you for money, it is selling you a service, so check exactly what you get.

What is the cheapest way to publish a book in the UK?

Do the work yourself and publish on Amazon KDP with its free ISBN. It costs about £4 for one proof copy of a 330-page paperback, plus delivery. If you can only pay for one thing, in most cases make it a proofread or a cover, whichever is weakest.

How much does editing a book cost in the UK?

Firms selling proofreading on its own publish prices from £12 to £19.79 per 1,000 words including VAT, so about £960 to £1,583 for 80,000 words. A developmental edit, copyedit and proofread together average about £4,900 for 80,000 words on the Reedsy marketplace.

Do I need to buy an ISBN in the UK?

Not to publish on Amazon: KDP gives you a free one for print, and Kindle ebooks don’t need one. Buy your own from Nielsen (£93 for one, £174 for ten) for your own imprint or to publish the same edition elsewhere.

How much do UK self-publishing companies charge?

PublishNation starts at £215. Grosvenor House publishes packages from £795 to £1,695 by word count, plus £250 for a bespoke cover. UK Book Publishing gives about £1,800 as an example. Matador’s pricing page gives examples from £650 (ebook only) to £7,500 (with 500 copies, a copy edit, trade marketing, publicity and a website).

Is self-publishing cheaper than traditional publishing?

A traditional publisher pays for editing, design and printing, and may pay you an advance, so it costs you nothing up front. In return it keeps most of the income and the rights, and getting a deal can take years. Self-publishing costs what you choose to spend, and you keep the rights and a far larger share of every sale.

Sources

• Prices on this list were re-read on 5 November 2026 unless a date says otherwise.
• Amazon KDP, Start publishing
• Amazon KDP, Get an ISBN
• Amazon KDP, paperback printing cost
• Amazon KDP, Expanded Distribution
• Nielsen UK ISBN Store
• CIEP suggested minimum rates (from 1 March 2026)
• Reedsy, cost to self-publish (the page says updated 13 Aug 2026)
• Grosvenor House prices and its proofreading page
• British Proofreaders
• London Proofreaders
• Proof-Reading-Service.co.uk
• Book Beaver premade covers
• Matador (Troubador) pricing
• PublishNation
• UK Book Publishing prices
• ECB reference rate via Frankfurter: $1 = £0.74075 on 4 Nov 2026
• HMRC VAT Notice 701/10

Who wrote this. I am Robert Prime. I run publishing.co.uk, which sells formatting, covers and A+ Content per job, so I have a stake in this question and I have tried to keep it fair: the calculator lets you pick £0 for every line, and the package firms' prices are quoted from their own pages. If any figure here is out of date, the provider's own page is right. Tell me and I will correct it and say so.