Self-publishing doesn't mean free. It means you pay every specialist directly, without a publisher acting as a middleman. It's a different cost structure, but the costs are real.
The editor. That came first. A good editor is someone who reads your text and sees what you can no longer see yourself: where the logic sags, where a scene drags, where a character is acting inconsistently with how you described them three chapters earlier. I was impatient and didn't drag out the search too long. Since I wanted to publish my first print book right away, even doing much of it myself, I reached out to one of the several services on the market. It had its own print shop attached, where you could print anywhere from a single copy up, plus all the prepress services. I was so high on having just finished my first manuscript that I didn't look into things too carefully. What mattered to me was that the author's voice be preserved and the edits kept minimal (I was, after all, sure I'd written a masterpiece).
The project manager assigned to me swore up and down she'd deliver everything I asked for, and then... put me on a waitlist for my editor. A month went by. I was billed 48,000 rubles. Two editing rounds. Once my editor was free, we got started and worked for two months. It ate up a significant chunk of the budget — and it was money well spent.
At the same time, I was working with an illustrator I found in an expat chat group in Bali. I'd pictured the illustrations as watercolors. We made 20 illustrations, two of which went on the cover, and with the same illustrator we also made a set of postcards. I paid 45,000 rubles.
The proofreader. A separate person, a different eye, a different task. The editor works with the text's meaning and structure. The proofreader works with commas, dashes, spelling, and punctuation. It might seem like a small thing. But the moment you see a book with mistakes in it, your trust in the text drops instantly — even if the content is wonderful. For me it cost 1,000 rubles, because I used a spell-check service. My texts are generally fairly literate; I mostly wanted the punctuation checked.
Layout. This is the thing readers usually don't notice when it's done well. Margins, fonts, line spacing, chapter formatting. When it's done badly, it grates on the eye, and reading becomes uncomfortable. This dragged on for me because the layout was done by the print shop, and they hadn't quite mentioned that I could only use it if I printed with them specifically. I was offended. It stung. But I got a lesson out of it — double-check everything, don't take anyone's word for it. In the end I paid them 6,000 rubles (not too high a price for a lesson). Plus I found a freelancer who redid the layout for self-publishing for 4,000 rubles.
Translation. Its own story, its own article, its own budget. A translator who understands the task — not a literal translation, but carrying the voice across — costs more than someone who simply knows the language. When I found out what it actually cost, I'll admit I was stunned by the prices. Starting at 80,000 rubles for a book my length, and climbing into the stratosphere from there. In the end, my oldest son translated my first book (and got to read it in the process :))) ). Not for free either, though. I won't get into the family details, but if I tally up the bare minimum I found elsewhere, it comes to 80,000 rubles.
And to wrap up the list of expenses, I had 5 copies of my first book printed — 4 in hardcover, and I finally saw my book looking exactly the way I'd imagined it, and 1 in paperback. That cost 22,000 rubles.
All told, the total came to a sum I hadn't expected going in. If someone had told me the number before I started, I probably would have gotten nervous. But when you see that behind every line of the budget is a real piece of work by a real person, it looks different.
But that wasn't actually the most expensive part.
The most expensive thing was the time I spent finding the right people. Not just hiring the first person available, but finding the ones you can actually trust. Reading portfolios, exchanging messages, watching how a person communicates — because an editor who's unpleasant to work with will ruin the process, even if they're a total professional.
What would I do now, preparing a book for self-publishing or sending a manuscript to a publisher? I'd use the editing, proofreading, and layout service my husband built (while I was writing my second book) — editroast.com. Depending on the manuscript's length, access to the service costs up to $100, roughly 8,000 rubles. And by the way, with a human editor, the amount you pay only covers two rounds of edits. With the service, you can run your manuscript through as many times as you like, fix whatever it flags, and polish it to perfection.
Whereas my whole experience cost: 48,000 (editor) + 1,000 (proofreading) + 10,000 (layout) = 59,000 rubles.
Notice the difference? 8,000 versus 59,000 rubles?
Plus the time spent: 4-5 months versus 2 weeks (using the self-editing service).
And one more thing — I'd budget for "a mistake." Because at least one mistake somewhere in the self-publishing process is almost guaranteed. It's not a catastrophe, it's just the price of experience. Better to know that going in.