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This month’s blog posts focus on the costs involved with self-publishing, offering typical price points and ways to save money on the production of your book (find our recent posts on editing and cover design here in our archive). As an editing, ghostwriting, and marketing company based in Phoenix, Arizona with clients across the globe, Midnight Publishing is dedicated to equipping authors with the knowledge needed to be savvy and successful on their self-publishing journey.

Perhaps a lesser-known step in a book’s publication is the interior formatting required—how the pages inside are designed, the margin sizes, the fonts used, the book’s overall size, any images or decorative borders, etc. Interior formatting for e-books and print is another essential ingredient for self-publishing that requires different rules. Here is a quick breakdown of formatting files to be expected from your interior formatter:

  1. E-book files that should include MOBI file (for Kindles) and ePUB file (for all other e-reader devices).
  2. A PDF file for print.

Interior Formatting: Invest or Save?

While the interior of a book should also appear professional and pleasing to the eye, it’s nowhere near as important to invest here in fancy images and design (the exception being for children’s books/those with a lot of images). Basic stylistic formatting choices actually work for the author in this case, as images and/or fancy fonts can sometimes go berserk in e-book files. Keep your costs low here, saving your money for book cover design and editing/proofreading.

#Selfpublishing has many aspects and #interiordesign is one of them. Here's what it costs. Click To Tweet

The Typical Cost of Interior Formatting

Similar to most freelance services, interior formatting prices are all across the board. Just like with book covers, you can expect to pay more for larger companies with specific packages and a staff of freelancers (bookbaby.com, thebookmakers.com) compared to freelancers working on their own. Costs for interior formatting can be expected to hover around the figures listed below:

Independent freelancers/small business owners:

  • $100 for e-book-only file interior formatting.
  • $100-$500 for e-book files and print files.
  • $250-$850 for professional typesetting, typography or a large amount of photos/images included.

Be sure to discuss the limit (if any) of revisions/passes included in the freelancer’s price for any service to be purchased, as there will be at least two or three revisions required before the file is completed to your liking.

Larger interior formatting companies:

**SPECIAL NOTE FROM MIDNIGHT PUBLISHING’S EXPERTS: Your book cover designer and interior formatter may need to work together for the print edition regarding the cover’s spine size—the ending page count designated by your formatter will dictate the size of the spine to be made by your cover designer. Because of this, it’s often more productive to have the interior formatting fully completed with a final page count for the cover designer before they complete the cover.**

Affordable Options

There are several free software programs you can use to design the interior formatting of your book on your own. One is the Reedsy Book Editor, while 48hrbooks.com offers free book templates to download from their website.

Be sure to check back next week for our final post in the cost of self-publishing series with a focus on marketing and events, and contact Midnight Publishing’s professional editors and ghostwriters today to tell us about your book project and get on our schedule!