Price your book, line by line.
Set your word count and pick what you will pay for. Every line shows a budget, typical and high-end price from a published source, what you can safely do yourself, and how many copies it takes to earn the money back. No email needed.
Your estimate
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Send your estimate and someone from Scribe will talk it through with you, including the parts you can do yourself. Scribe sells book services, so you will hear about them, but the estimate is yours either way.
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What the calculator does with your numbers
Editing is your word count times a per-word rate. The budget and high-end figures are the two ends of the median range the Editorial Freelancers Association published in its 2026 rate chart for your book type, and typical is the midpoint. For nonfiction that is 4 to 5 cents a word for a developmental edit, 3.5 to 5 cents for a line edit, 3 to 4 cents for a copy edit and 2 to 3 cents for a proofread.
Cover runs from $350 (the EFA's per-project median for book covers) to $1,200 (the top of the middle half of covers sold on Reedsy), with Reedsy's median of $930 as typical ($740 for memoir).
Layout is pages times the EFA's per-page layout rates: $5.00 to $7.50 for print and $1.88 to $4.38 for ebooks. Pages are estimated at 360 words a page, the low end of a 6 x 9 inch book at 11.5 point type according to Gatekeeper Press. Type your own page count if you have a proof.
Print cost per copy uses Amazon KDP's paperback formula: for a black-ink, regular-trim book over 108 pages, $1.00 plus $0.012 a page. A 140-page book costs $2.68 to print.
Break-even divides your plan total by what one copy earns. A paperback on Amazon.com earns 60% of a list price of $9.99 or more (50% below that) minus the print cost. An ebook priced from $2.99 to $12.99 earns 70% of the price after a delivery fee of $0.15 per megabyte; other prices earn 35%. The full rules are in the break-even guide.
All rates were checked on October 20, 2026. The about page explains the method and how the site handles Scribe Media's own prices.
Common questions
How much does it cost to publish a 50,000-word book?
With this calculator's example settings (developmental edit, copy edit and proofread at typical rates, a professional cover and print layout, one ISBN, copyright registration, a Library of Congress number and 25 author copies), about $7,300, with the same items running roughly $5,800 to $8,500 from budget to high-end freelancers. Paying only for a budget copy edit, a budget cover and copyright registration brings it to about $1,900.
Where do the rates come from?
Editing, layout and ghostwriting rates come from the Editorial Freelancers Association 2026 Rate Chart. Cover prices come from the EFA and Reedsy's marketplace data. ISBN prices are Bowker's, copyright fees are the US Copyright Office's, and printing and royalties use Amazon KDP's published formulas. Each line in the result links to its source.
Does the estimate include shipping or my time?
No. Amazon does not publish a shipping formula for author copies, so shipping is left out, as are taxes and the hours you put in yourself.
Is my information saved or sent anywhere?
Your choices are saved in your own browser so the page remembers them. Nothing is sent to anyone unless you fill in the optional form. The share link puts your choices in the web address, so only share it with people you want to see them.
Why is the break-even number so high?
Because royalties per copy are small next to editing and design costs. A paperback earning about $7.50 a copy needs about 970 sales to recover $7,300. Many nonfiction authors earn the money back through clients, speaking or bulk sales instead, which the break-even guide covers.