How much should writers pay to be published?

The title to this piece is Admiral Ackbar’s greatest fear: It is, indeed, a trap. Because the answer to this question is obvious: you shouldn’t pay anything to get published. Now, classically, this was pretty easy to uphold and understand because authors had ‘mostly’ one way to get their books into people’s ‘eyeballs’, and that […]

The title to this piece is Admiral Ackbar’s greatest fear:
It is, indeed, a trap.
Because the answer to this question is obvious: you shouldn’t pay anything to get published.
Now, classically, this was pretty easy to uphold and understand because authors had ‘mostly’ one way to get their books into people’s ‘eyeballs’, and that was through the Legacy Traditional Old-School Publishing System. Which is to say, you sent your precious baby manuscript out to agents, and then when you snagged an agent, that agent sent your precious adolescent manuscript out to publishers, and if you snagged a ‘publisher’, your all-growed-up book got a job on a bookshelf somewhere in America selling itself like a piece of prime narrative beef.
And in that chain, the author was routinely warned not to pay anything. Don’t pay reading fees to agents. Don’t pay publishers to publish you. Don’t pay booksellers to sell your book. They will make their money off of your book – that’s how they get paid, and that’s how you get paid.
The saying went, and still goes – It’s money in, not money out.
Money flows toward the writer, not away from the writer.
The rise of self-publishing has changed that equation… sort of. In the old ways of the elder publishers, you didn’t pay for things like cover, marketing, editing. They did that because they are the ones backing the book and the ones with the ecosystem to (ideally) help that book not just survive, but thrive. They did that, because that was their job.
As a self-publisher, that is now your job, but it is of course unreasonable to demand that a single author is also simultaneously really good at cover design, e-book design, marketing, editing, and so on. Which means you have to hire people to do this thing for you, which somewhat disrupts that whole “no money out” rule, yeah? Though the core truth remains: paying for these things are not you paying to get published. Meaning, you could literally write a book (or any equivalent steaming diaper fire that consists of words), upload it to Amazon or wherever, and boom, you got published. No fees. Paying out money is therefore to make your existing product better – not get the product to shelves.
And so, it would seem then that the rise of certain bundling services is an attractive option – they bundle together editing, cover, marketing, liquor purchases, grief counselling, and other vital services – and then you pay one price and that gaggle of book-wizards turn your self-published book into something that looks better than the aforementioned diaper fire. It’s sensible enough – if you’re going to pay for these services individually, then if you find a trusted service-bundler, more power to you.
Of course there the question becomes, do you trust said service-bundler? Do they have the experience necessary to make this work? Do they hire the best, or do they just have a van full of chimpanzees they call upon to do their work?
In this interstitial gap of paying money, you start to find people whose intentions might be impure toward you and your manuscript. Or, best case, their intentions are well-meaning but their actual actions are either exploitative or simply incapable and inept.
Source: Terrible Minds