BookBaby
Pay-per-book self-publishing service for ebook conversion, print on demand and distribution
Pricing on request
Category
The best Publishing software
Print & Publishing software and applications
- Tools listed
- 31
All 31 publishing tools
Every listing shows its published starting price on the same footing, so a shortlist does not take ten tabs.
What publishing software costs
Counted from the published pricing of the 31 listings on this page. A tool counts as free only where it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence or a starting price of zero.
- Cheapest paid plan
- $1.99Webtoon
- Median entry price
- $11.49across 14 priced
- Dearest entry price
- $299BookBaby
- Publish a $0 plan
- 17of 31
Paid publishing plans in this set start anywhere from $1.99 a month for Webtoon to $299 for BookBaby. The median entry price across the 14 tools that publish one is $11.49, half of them start below that figure and half above it.
Entry price is not the ceiling. The dearest published tier anywhere in this category is Shopify's at $2,300 a month, 7.7× the highest entry price on the page. Read the top of each ladder as well as the bottom, because that is where you land after two years of growth.
17 of 31 publish a $0 plan, and 11 of those charge nothing at all. 8 tools have no free tier of any kind.
6 of 31 keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote, which in practice means the number you end up paying at the top end is not on this page or on theirs.
How these vendors bill
The billing model each of the 31 publishing listings publishes, counted. Two tools at the same headline price are not the same purchase if one of them charges per seat.
- Open source, no licence fee
- 4
- One-time purchase
- 2
- Per user per month, unlimited
- 2
- subscription
- 2
- usage-based
- 2
- 10% of retail list price, no upfront fee
- 1
- Flat-fee subscription, no commission on paid plans
- 1
- Free app, revenue from book purchases and optional subscription
- 1
- Free store and app; hardware sold separately; optional subscription
- 1
- Free title setup, then per-unit print cost and revision fees
- 1
- Free to publish; Amazon earns a royalty share rather than a fee
- 1
- Free to publish; Kobo earns a royalty share rather than a fee
- 1
- Free to read on a delay; Webtoon Coins purchased to unlock early chapter access
- 1
- Free tools; freelancers quote per project
- 1
- Free with ads; paid ad-free subscription and optional in-app coin purchases
- 1
- Free, no licence fee
- 1
- Free, no subscription or in-app purchases; funded by Amazon as a commerce and data feeder
- 1
- freemium
- 1
- One-time purchase per project
- 1
- One-time purchase, free ad-supported version available
- 1
- open-source
- 1
- Per credit per month, credits never expire
- 1
- Per licence per year
- 1
- Subscription only, single app or Creative Cloud; published on the vendor site
- 1
Separately, 6 of 31 publish at least one tier with no price attached. Those are sold by quote, so the top of the ladder is negotiable, and unknowable, until you talk to sales.
What comes as standard, and what you pay extra for
Every capability named in a published pricing tier by any of the 20 publishing tools here that break their plans down, counted once per vendor. This measures what vendors choose to advertise as a selling point, not everything the software does, an absence below is silence, not a missing feature.
Named most often
- Commercial use permitted , 2 of 20
- Community support , 2 of 20
- Full functionality , 2 of 20
- No delivery fee deducted , 2 of 20
- Offline downloads , 2 of 20
Named by fewer
Nothing else is named by more than one vendor, beyond the list on the left, no two of these tools describe their tiers the same way.
Named by exactly one vendor: Ad-free reading, Applies below the $2.99 threshold, Ebook conversion and formatting, In-copyright works only, One audiobook credit per month, Special government pricing available. Those are differentiators rather than table stakes.
What “Publishing” covers in practice
The subject tags that recur across these 31 listings, with the number of tools carrying each. A category label is a filing decision; this is the closer read of what is actually filed under it.
- Self Publishing8
- audiobooks5
- Open Source5
- Ebooks4
- Epub4
- Print On Demand4
- Desktop Publishing3
- Free3
- Isbn3
- Print3
- reading3
- subscription3
Carried by a single tool: adobe, Book Design, cross-platform, Ebook Conversion, Formatting, magazines, Prepress, Subscription Pricing. If one of those is the reason you are here, the category page is the wrong lens, go straight to that product.
How to choose between them
Four things the numbers above should change about your shortlist.
Start with the free tiers if there are enough of them
17 of 31 publishing tools here publish a $0 plan, which is enough to run a real trial without a purchase order. A free tier is worth more than a free trial when you are evaluating: a trial expires on the vendor's schedule, a free plan expires when you outgrow it. The thing to check before you commit is which of the capabilities below sit above the free line, starting with commercial use permitted, the single most frequently named capability in this category's published tiers.
Read the spread before you read the features
$1.99 to $299 is a $297.01 spread on entry price alone, and a spread that wide is never about polish, it is about who the vendor built for. Tools at the bottom of this ladder are priced for one person or a small team; tools near $299 are priced for a department with a procurement process. Decide which of those you are before you compare capability, or you will shortlist four tools that were never competing for the same buyer.
Check which tier you actually land on
6 of 31 tools here publish three or more tiers, and the median vendor in this category ships 1.5 of them. The advertised price is the first rung, and the things teams tend to need, commercial use permitted, community support, full functionality, are named in higher plans far more often than in entry ones. Price your shortlist at the tier that contains what you need, not at the tier on the pricing page's left edge.
The billing model matters more than the headline number
This category splits across 24 billing models: Open source, no licence fee on 4 listings, One-time purchase on 2, and 22 other arrangements across the rest. A per-user price and a flat subscription at the same headline figure are not the same purchase, the first one grows with headcount and the second does not. Multiply by your real team size before you compare two numbers side by side.
Compare publishing tools directly
Every pairing below is a full comparison: the same checklist applied to both, so a gap in one is a gap in the other.
- BookBaby vs Everand
- Everand vs Goodreads
- Goodreads vs Kindle
- Kindle vs Kobo
- Kobo vs Libro.fm
- Libro.fm vs Moon Reader
- Moon Reader vs PublishDrive
- PublishDrive vs Scrivener
Go straight to the numbers
- BookBabypricingalternatives
- Everandpricingalternatives
- Goodreadspricingalternatives
- Kindlepricingalternatives
- Kobopricingalternatives
- Libro.fmpricingalternatives
Questions people ask about publishing software
Answered from the listings on this page, and nowhere else.
- How much does publishing software cost?
- Across the 31 publishing tools listed here, paid plans start between $1.99 and $299 a month, with a median entry price of $11.49. The most expensive single tier published in the category is $2,300 a month (Shopify). 17 of 31 also publish a $0 plan.
- What is the cheapest publishing software?
- 11 of the 31 tools listed here cost nothing at all. Among the ones that charge, Webtoon has the lowest published entry price at $1.99 a month. Cheapest and best value are different questions: check which tier the capability you need actually appears in before you compare starting prices.
- Is there free publishing software?
- Yes, 17 of 31 tools in this category publish a plan priced at $0. 11 of them are free outright, with no paid tier above. A tool is only counted as free here when it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence, or a starting price of zero, a free trial does not count.
- What features should publishing software have?
- Judging by what vendors put in their own published pricing tiers, the most frequently named capabilities in this category are commercial use permitted (2 of 20 tools that publish plan detail), community support (2) and full functionality (2). Treat those as the category baseline. Anything named by only one vendor, such as ad-free reading or applies below the $2.99 threshold, is a differentiator rather than a standard, so it is worth deciding whether you need it before it narrows your shortlist to one.
- How is publishing software usually billed?
- Open source, no licence fee (4), One-time purchase (2), Per user per month, unlimited (2), subscription (2), plus 20 less common arrangements, counted across the 31 listings on this page. The distinction that costs money is per-seat versus flat: a per-user plan at the same headline price scales with your headcount and a flat subscription does not. 6 of 31 tools also keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote.
- What does publishing software actually cover?
- The 31 tools on this page do not describe themselves the same way. The subject tags they carry most often are self publishing (8), audiobooks (5), open source (5), ebooks (4), epub (4). That spread is the honest answer to what the category means in practice: it is not one product shape, and two tools filed under publishing may overlap on very little.
- How many pricing tiers do publishing tools offer?
- 28 of 31 tools here publish a plan breakdown, and the median one has 1.5 tiers. 6 of 31 publish three or more. More tiers is not generosity, it usually means the capability you are buying for sits two rungs above the advertised price, so price your shortlist at the tier that contains it.
- How many publishing tools are listed on Softwr?
- 31 approved publishing listings appear on this page, including BookBaby, Everand, Goodreads, Kindle. Each links to a full breakdown with its pricing tiers and plan detail, and the category can be filtered by price and sorted by rating above. You can also read the shortlist view at /best/publishing, which ranks the same set by published rating.
Keep this
Email me these 31 picks
The shortlist for “Publishing”, plus a note if any of their prices change.
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Neighbouring categories
Adjacent in the same taxonomy, not a ranking.