How to publish a book: a step-by-step guide
The manuscript is finished. Now begins the part most authors have no prior experience with — actually publishing the book. The good news is that in Estonia this is neither complicated nor expensive if you do things in the right order. The bad news is that the wrong order costs money: you cannot design the cover before the page count is known, and you cannot print the ISBN on the cover if you have not applied for it yet.
This guide covers eight steps from manuscript to finished book — what really happens at each stage and how long it takes.
1. Have the manuscript edited
This is the step authors skip most often, and the only one whose absence is most visible later. An editor's work splits in two.
Developmental editing looks at the text as a whole: does the structure hold, have repetitions been weeded out, are the chapter lengths balanced. In fiction this touches pace and characters; in non-fiction, logic and sources.
Copy-editing and proofreading deal with spelling, punctuation, and consistency of names and figures. Proofreading always happens twice: before layout and after it, because layout creates new errors (hyphenation, stray lines, captions that end up in the wrong place).
Editing must be finished before layout begins. If the author rewrites paragraphs during layout, the whole page rhythm has to be reviewed again — and that is chargeable extra work.
2. Decide format, extent and print run
Three decisions that affect everything that follows.
Format. The most common sizes in Estonia are 130×200 mm (novels), 145×205 mm and 170×240 mm (non-fiction, image-heavy works). A5 (148×210 mm) is economical because paper is used efficiently. A larger format means fewer pages but more expensive paper.
Extent. You can estimate the page count from the character count: at normal layout settings, one page holds 1,800–2,200 characters including spaces. A manuscript of 400,000 characters therefore comes to roughly 200 pages.
Print run. Here two roads diverge. Digital printing makes sense up to about 200–300 copies; offset becomes cheaper from 300–500 copies upwards. The unit price drops sharply as the run grows, but boxes of unsold books in the basement are not a saving.
3. Layout
The typesetter places the text on pages: chooses the typeface, sets margins and leading, builds the heading hierarchy, produces the table of contents and indexes, places images, and makes sure the page count fits the printer's signatures. In a substantial work, indexes and references are the most labour-intensive part.
We have written about what layout involves, what drives the price and how to prepare a manuscript in a separate article: book layout — what a typesetter does and what it costs.
Layout produces two files: a print-ready PDF for the printer and a page-numbered version for proofreading.
4. Cover design
The cover can only be finalised once the page count and paper weight are known — the spine width is calculated from them. A couple of millimetres of error means the title is not centred on the spine.
The cover is really three surfaces: front, spine and back. The back carries the blurb, the ISBN barcode and often the price. Cover design and what makes a book stand out on the shelf are covered in book cover design.
5. Apply for an ISBN and name the publisher
The ISBN is the book's international number. In Estonia it is issued by the National Library and it is free. You apply through a web form and normally get an answer within a few working days. Every distinct edition needs its own ISBN: hardback and paperback get different numbers, as does the e-book.
To get an ISBN you must state a publisher. If you have no publishing house, you are the publisher yourself — this is entirely normal and legal. A book can also be published in the name of your own company.
If you are not the sole author, or you use someone else's photographs and illustrations, sort out the rights in writing before printing. An image found online is not automatically cleared for print — always check the licence terms.
6. The printer
What you hand over to the printer is a print-ready PDF. The requirements are precise: correct colour model, bleed, embedded fonts, image resolution of at least 300 dpi. These are covered in more detail in book printing — what the printer expects from your files.
Before committing to a full run, order a proof copy or at least a digital proof. Colours never look exactly the same on screen and on paper, and only on paper can you see whether the type is large enough and whether show-through is too strong.
Printing typically takes 5–15 working days in Estonia, depending on binding and workload. Queues are longer before Christmas — plan at least a month ahead.
7. Legal deposit copies
Estonia has a legal deposit law: the publisher of any printed work must send a prescribed number of copies to the National Library, which distributes them among memory institutions. This is not optional and it is the publisher's obligation, not the printer's. In practice the simplest approach is to agree that the printer sends them directly.
Legal deposit also means the book enters the Estonian national bibliography and library catalogues — free visibility that lasts for decades.
8. Pricing and sales
Three things go into the retail price: the unit cost (printing + layout + cover + editing divided by the run), the bookshops' commission (typically 35–45% of the retail price in Estonia), and VAT. If you sell the book yourself from your own website or at events, the commission stays with you.
Sales channels:
- Bookshops — Rahva Raamat, Apollo and smaller shops. Contracts are usually on consignment.
- Your own website — the highest margin and direct contact with the reader. You do not need a full online store to sell one title; an order form and a bank transfer are often enough. If volumes grow, consider building an online store.
- Libraries — a real and steady channel, especially for history, local history and reference works.
- Events and launches — often the most profitable channel for small runs.
Before sales start, give the book at least one proper web page: title, cover image, description, an extract, author bio and a way to order. That is where every mention — press coverage, social media, the afterglow of a launch — should lead.
Timeline and budget — what to realistically expect
| Stage | Typical duration |
|---|---|
| Editing and proofreading | 2–6 weeks |
| Layout | 1–3 weeks |
| Cover design | 1–2 weeks |
| ISBN | 1–3 working days |
| Printing | 1–3 weeks |
From manuscript to finished book usually takes two to four months. It can be done faster, but a week saved on proofreading turns up later as printed errors in every copy.
Budget orders of magnitude: layout from €690, with cover design from €990 (see the pricing page); editing is separate, and printing depends on run and binding. A 300-copy run of a 200-page paperback usually lands in the region of a couple of thousand euros in Estonia.
Summary
Publishing a book is not a mysterious process — it is eight steps, each of them perfectly manageable on its own. What matters most is the order: editing before layout, page count before the cover, ISBN before printing, a proof copy before the full run.
We have laid out and designed both fiction and substantial works of history and name registers, where structure, indexes and accuracy matter most. If your manuscript is finished or nearly there, send it to us — within a couple of working days we will tell you what layout and cover will cost and how long it will take. See the book design and layout page for details, or get in touch via the contact page.
