publish a book at one's own expense

2026-02-21 10:24

Self-funded publishing was a form of publishing, as opposed to publicly-funded publishing. In China, books suitable for self-publication included academic, professional, personal autobiographies, poems, essays, essays, reminiscences, local chronicles, or other types of books with small print runs. It also included books that the publishing house was unwilling to take the risk of publishing at public expense, but the author wanted to officially publish them to showcase his literary, artistic, or academic achievements. The process of publishing a book at one's own expense was as follows: 1. Prepare the manuscript (After the first draft is completed, you can prepare a personal introduction, a brief introduction, and a few chapters). 2. Find a suitable publishing house (Currently, publishing houses rarely interact with individuals. If you can't find a publishing house, you can also find a publishing company to cooperate with). 3. Title selection application (fill in the title selection form and submit it to the publishing house. The editor will review it and summarize it. The editor-in-chief will gather relevant personnel to discuss the topics that can be submitted. The provincial publishing house will report it to the provincial publishing bureau. The central publishing house will report it to the national publishing bureau and wait for approval). 4. Typography (Decide whether it is 32k or 16k, it can be designed together with the cover). 5. Third review and third proofreading (the editor, the director of the editorial office, and the chief editor's office will review it in turn. Every time they have any comments, they will feedback it to the author for revision and then send it back to the publishing house for further review, a total of three times). 6. Quality inspection (After the three checks are completed, the quality inspection room will select 5000 - 10,000 words for quality inspection. If you pass, you will proceed to the next step. If you don't pass, you will return to the fifth step). 7. Request for a book number (the publishing bureau will allocate a book number to the publishing house at the beginning of the year. After completing the above process, the book number will be obtained). 8. 9. Open the seal list. 10. Print. 11. Send sample booklets. Self-funded publishing had a certain meaning. It could give the work warmth, culture, and value. However, due to the content and genre, it generally did not enter the mainstream publishing system. The author could fight for and expand the market according to his own situation. It usually takes 3 - 6 months for a self-funded book to be published. The cost mainly includes the book number fee. For example, the review fee for a 150,000-word book was about 3000 yuan, the design and layout fee for 200 black and white pages was about 3000 yuan, and the printing fee for 3000 black and white small 16-print copies (including paper) was about 15000 yuan. The total cost was about 60,000 - 80,000 yuan. You need to be careful when choosing a collaboration related to self-funded publishing. For example, if the publishing fee is too low, you say you can publish without reading the manuscript, you promise to publish but can't see the actual case, the company has been established for a very short time or there are many bad reviews on the Internet, and there are many lawsuits.