Book publishing companies, compared
Almost every "top 10 publishing companies" list is published by a company that appears on it, usually first. That is worth knowing before you read any of them, including this one.
The more useful question is not which company is best but which *category* you need, because the three below are genuinely different businesses and picking the wrong category costs far more than picking the wrong company within it.
The three categories
| Platforms | Marketplaces | Package providers | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What they are | Retail and print infrastructure | Directories of freelancers | Firms that manage the whole project |
| You pay | Nothing upfront; a cut per sale | Each freelancer directly | A fee upfront |
| Who does the work | You | Freelancers you choose | The firm |
| Publisher of record | You / your imprint | You / your imprint | Should be you — check |
| Best for | Anyone. This is the destination | Authors who want control | Authors who want it handled |
| Examples | KDP, IngramSpark, Lulu, Draft2Digital | Reedsy | BookBaby, and firms like ours |
Nearly every self-published book ends up on a platform regardless of route. The real decision is whether you do the production work yourself, hire individuals to do it, or pay a firm to manage it.
Platforms — the destination, whichever route you take
Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing
Free to use, no setup fee, no annual fee. Ebooks pay 35% or 70% of list price depending on the price band and territory, with a delivery cost deducted on the higher tier; paperbacks pay 60% of list minus printing. Amazon assigns an ASIN for ebooks, and will supply a free paperback ISBN with the catch that the book lists as "Independently published" and that ISBN cannot travel elsewhere.
It is the largest single channel for English-language books by a wide margin. Nobody serious skips it.
IngramSpark
Print-on-demand feeding the Ingram wholesale catalogue, which is what physical bookshops and libraries order from. This is the route to shelf space that Amazon closes off, because a bookshop will not order stock from Amazon.
Offers wider trim sizes, paper stocks and hardback. Has historically charged title setup and revision fees, frequently waived — check current terms rather than trusting any figure, including from us.
Draft2Digital
An ebook aggregator rather than a retailer: it distributes to Apple Books, Kobo, Barnes & Noble and library platforms from a single upload, with free automated formatting. No upfront fees at all; it takes a percentage of retail on sales it makes.
The obvious choice if you are going wide and do not want separate accounts at five retailers.
Lulu
Print-on-demand with unusually broad format support — hardback, photo books, calendars, spiral-bound workbooks — which makes it the practical option for books that are not a standard paperback. Self-serve, and its royalty structure is less generous than KDP for straightforward trade formats, so most authors use it for the formats others cannot print rather than as a primary channel.
Marketplaces — hiring the people directly
Reedsy
A curated directory of freelance editors, designers, ghostwriters and marketers. You browse profiles, request quotes and hire individuals; Reedsy vets who gets listed and handles the contracting.
Honestly assessed, this is the best-value route for most authors who are willing to project-manage. You see exactly who is doing the work and what each stage costs, and you can hire a developmental editor without buying a marketing package you did not want. The trade is that coordinating five freelancers across a nine-month project is itself a job, and not everyone wants it.
Package providers — paying a firm to manage it
This is the category we are in, and it is the category with the widest quality range in publishing. The same description — "full-service publishing" — covers firms doing careful work and operations that exist to sell packages.
BookBaby
Bundles production, printing and distribution into per-book packages, with editing, cover design and formatting available as add-ons. Long-established and widely used, particularly by first-time authors who want one point of contact.
One structural point worth knowing: prices are not published on the site — you go through a quote process. That is common in this category and not by itself a warning sign, but it does mean you cannot compare without contacting them, and published figures found elsewhere online vary so widely that we have not quoted any here.
Firms like ours
Smaller managed-service companies, of which there are many. The category is worth entering only if the specific firm passes the checks — rights stay yours, costs are itemised, and client books are nameable and findable. Ours are listed and linked, which is the least any of us should be asked for.
The checks that separate a real firm in this category from a vanity operation are the same everywhere, and they are worth running on us: how to choose a book publishing company
On prices
You will notice almost no figures above. That is deliberate. Most companies in the third category do not publish prices, and the numbers circulating on comparison sites for the same company in the same year differ by a factor of three or more — we found one firm quoted at three incompatible prices by three sources within weeks of each other.
Quoting any of them would make this page look more useful and be less true. Ask each company directly for an itemised quote, dated, and compare those. Anyone unwilling to itemise has answered a different question.
So which should you use?
- Publishing on Amazon and nowhere else, doing the work yourself: KDP alone.
- Going wide: KDP for Amazon, Draft2Digital for everything else.
- You want bookshops and libraries: add IngramSpark, and leave KDP expanded distribution off.
- You want professional production and will manage it: hire through a marketplace.
- You want it handled and are willing to pay for that: a package provider — after running the checks.
- Unusual formats: Lulu, whatever else you use.
Common questions
- Why is this page not ranked one to ten?
- Because the honest answer depends on what you need, and because we would appear on any list we published. Grouping by category is more useful and less self-serving.
- Is a package provider ever worth it over hiring freelancers?
- If you value not project-managing, yes. You pay a coordination premium for a single point of contact and a schedule someone else keeps. If you are willing to manage it, hiring directly usually costs less.
- Do I have to choose just one?
- No, and most authors do not. KDP plus IngramSpark plus an aggregator is a common setup, and using a service company for production does not tie you to any particular platform.
- Why are prices not listed?
- Because most of these companies do not publish them and the third-party figures contradict each other badly. A price table here would be tidy and unreliable. Get itemised quotes and compare those.