Writers often make the mistake of over-spending when self-publishing.

Ways to spend your budget wisely

1. Determine your skills: Assessing your own skillset is crucial when figuring out your budget. This determines what services you need to spend some of that precious budget on.

2. Using the right tools: There are free or cheaper tools that eliminate expensive service costs. For example, Reedsy.com will format your book for free! Canva.com (used to make promotions and book covers) is approximately $9 per month. When you start using these tools, you can cut down your payouts significantly.

3. Don't pay services to publish your book: As tricky as it seems to be, you can publish your book to Amazon, Smashwords, Ingram Spark, and more fairly easily with their step-by-step directions. Don't be like me and make the mistake of paying thousands of dollars for something you can do yourself for free.

4. Save the majority of your budget for editing: You would be surprised by the affordable and reputable editors you can find through freelancing websites like Upwork. I managed to find a well-reviewed editor for just 250 dollars for my 60k book. I simply paid them $20 dollars for a sample edit of my first three chapters to see how her editing was before I hired her.

Publishing is exciting, don't get bogged by the expenses

Once you plan your budget and spend your money wisely, you find it's really very inexpensive to publish your work. Don't be fooled by the gimmicks and flashy services out there.

You got this!