Riley
Support · AI agent
Riley is an AI agent. She can look things up, email you details, and pass anything she can’t finish to a person.
What it really costs, what you need to set up, how royalties and tax forms work, and how long it takes to publish your first book. It also tells you when you don't need a publishing company at all.
From Archieboy Holdings, the company behind the publishing service eBookIt.com. Written for the United States, with notes for the UK and Canada. This is general information, not legal or tax advice; prices were checked in October 2026 and change, so confirm them before you buy.
Start with the honest question, because the answer is often no.
If you only publish your own books, you don't need a company. You can buy ISBNs in an imprint name of your choosing, list that imprint as the publisher, and publish through Amazon KDP and IngramSpark as a sole proprietor. Readers and bookstores will see your imprint, and nobody needs to know it is you. A full publishing company adds paperwork you have no use for.
You do need one when you publish other people's books. The moment a second author is involved, you are making promises to someone else: a contract, royalty payments, statements, tax forms and answers to their questions. Those obligations are what a publishing company exists to carry.
There are two common models, and the choice shapes your contracts, your prices and your reputation.
You choose the books, pay for their production and pay authors a royalty on sales. You earn what is left of each sale after printing, store discounts and the author's share. It needs some capital and good judgment about which books will sell.
Authors pay you for publishing, and in return usually receive higher royalties than a traditional press would pay. Done well, it is a respectable business. Done badly, it is a vanity press with a nicer name. If you plan to charge authors, read the Independent Book Publishers Association's criteria for a reputable hybrid publisher and hold yourself to them: be selective, be transparent about fees, pay royalties properly and publish to industry standards.
Many coaches and ghostwriters run a hybrid model without calling it that: their clients pay a publishing package and keep most of the royalties. That is fine, as long as the contract says so plainly.
Pick a name that doesn't depend on one author, one genre or your own name, unless you are sure you want that. Check that the .com is free, and search the trademark records for the exact words before you print anything. Our free Name your press tool checks the .com for you and links to the official trademark searches.
Most small presses in the United States form a limited liability company (LLC). State filing fees run from about $50 to $500, and many states add an annual report fee. California is the well-known exception, with a minimum franchise tax of $800 a year. If your press's name differs from the company's legal name, you may also need to register it as a "doing business as" (DBA) name, usually for $10 to $100.
Then get a free Employer Identification Number (EIN) from the IRS website and open a business bank account. Keep the press's money separate from yours from the first day; your accountant will thank you at tax time.
Registering your press's name with the USPTO is optional at the start. The base fee is $350 per class of goods or services (books are class 16; publishing services are class 41), with extra surcharges if you write your own description rather than using the USPTO's standard wording. Many presses register once they know the name will last.
An ISBN identifies one edition of one book, and whoever owns it is the publisher of record. Each format needs its own: the paperback, the hardcover and the ebook are three ISBNs. (Many stores don't require one for an ebook, but distributors and libraries prefer it.)
In the United States, ISBNs are sold only by Bowker, at myidentifiers.com. Its published prices are about $125 for one, $295 for ten, $575 for a hundred and $1,500 for a thousand. A new press should buy at least a hundred if it plans more than a handful of books, because the price per ISBN falls sharply.
Avoid the free ISBNs for a press. KDP's free ISBN works only on Amazon, and lists Amazon's imprint rather than yours. IngramSpark's free ISBN (available to US publishers only) is tied to IngramSpark. Neither makes your press the publisher everywhere.
In Canada, ISBNs are free from Library and Archives Canada. In the UK they are sold by Nielsen.
Open the accounts in the press's name, never in an author's, so the catalog stays with the press.
Your author agreement is the most important document your press will own, so have a publishing lawyer review your template once rather than improvising for every author. It should cover at least:
Copyright belongs to the author automatically, but registering it with the US Copyright Office ($45 to $65 per book) strengthens their position if it is ever infringed. Decide in the contract whether you or the author will file it.
Every title goes through the same list: editing and proofreading, a cover (front, spine and back for print), a print interior laid out to the trim size, an EPUB that passes validation, and metadata (description, keywords and subject categories) that helps readers find it. Then you upload it, order a printed proof and approve it.
Two Library of Congress steps are worth knowing. A new press can request a free Preassigned Control Number before publication, which libraries use for cataloging. The fuller Cataloging in Publication data is only open to publishers with books by at least three authors that are each held by a thousand or more US libraries, so it comes later. US copyright law also requires two copies of each printed book to be deposited with the Copyright Office within three months of publication.
This is the part most new presses underestimate, and the part that causes the most trouble with authors when it is late or wrong.
| Item | Typical cost (US) | When |
|---|---|---|
| LLC filing | $50 to $500, plus any annual state fee | Once |
| EIN from the IRS | Free | Once |
| ISBNs | $295 for 10 or $575 for 100 | As needed |
| IngramSpark and KDP accounts and title setup | Free (Ingram takes 1.875% of print sales) | Per title |
| Lawyer's review of your author contract | Several hundred to a few thousand dollars, depending on the lawyer | Once |
| Trademark (optional) | $350 per class | Once |
| Copyright registration | $45 to $65 | Per title |
| Printed proof | The book's print cost plus shipping | Per title |
| Editing and cover design, if you hire freelancers | Usually the largest cost of each book | Per title |
| Website and domain | From about $20 a year for the domain | Yearly |
So the bare minimum to open a press is a few hundred dollars. Most new presses spend $1,000 to $3,000 before their first book, and the larger ongoing cost is time: production and administration for every title, every quarter.
Two to three months from deciding to start to your first published title is normal, if the manuscript is already written.
None of the steps above is hard on its own. The difficulty is that together they are a second full-time job: production for every book, author email every day, sales reports and statements every quarter, and tax forms every January. That list is why many people who would run a fine small press never start one.
You can carry it in three ways: do it yourself, hire staff or freelancers, or hand it to software. We built the Archieboy Publisher Platform for the third way. Your press gets its own website, storefront and author portal under your name, and an AI agent, running on your own ChatGPT account, does the production, author correspondence, royalty statements and tax forms. You approve the decisions. Publishing a finished manuscript as an ebook and paperback is included in the plan, which starts at $99 a month.
It is not for everyone. If you will only ever publish your own books, you don't need it. If you want human editors supplied with the service, we don't offer that. But if you have authors who trust you and you want a real press without the second job, see it with your own press name or apply below.
The bare minimum in the United States is a few hundred dollars: a state LLC filing fee and a block of ten ISBNs. Most new presses spend roughly $1,000 to $3,000 before their first book once a lawyer has reviewed their author contract.
No, but it is sensible once you publish other people's books, because it keeps the press's obligations separate from your personal assets. An accountant can tell you which structure suits your state.
Yes, if you learn the steps above or use tools that carry them. The part that can't be bought is the trust of authors, which is why coaches, editors and ghostwriters often make good publishers.
Two to four weeks to set up, and another four to eight weeks to publish the first book from a finished manuscript.
A traditional press keeps what is left of each sale after printing, store discounts and royalties. A hybrid press also charges authors for publishing. In both, keeping production and administration costs low decides whether the press is profitable.
We're opening to ten publishers first, at $500 setup instead of $1,500 and with your monthly price locked. Tell us a little about you and Bo Bennett will be in touch personally. Applying doesn't commit you to anything.
Riley is an AI agent. She can look things up, email you details, and pass anything she can’t finish to a person.