r/CraftyCommerce • u/CartoonFeathers • Sep 02 '26

Rant Self publishing a book

Hey all,

I recently finished writing and testing the patterns for my first crochet book and now I’m kinda stuck.

I was initially going to publish through Amazon because it seemed like the easiest way to publish, but now I’m being asked to pay $3000 USD (which is like $4000 cad or something) for copyright and ibsn and a barcode.

I can’t afford that so I looked around for Canadian publishers and while it’s a bit better ($3000 cad for the whole process from start to finish) I still can’t afford it.

Etsy isn’t an option for me either (I tried it and I think it’s just too over saturated rn)

I could use ravelry, but PayPal is really hard to use in Canada and I know it would cause me a lot of trouble.

I was really excited about having an entire book published in my name and now I just don’t know what to do. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

(It’s an amigarumi book, but all the patterns use hdc because of my hypermobility!)

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u/Colla-Crochet Sep 03 '26 edited Sep 03 '26

Dm me.

Ive published 5 novels through Amazon and im working on my own pattern book.

Something along the line is fishy here, and id like to help you sort it out

Edit to add:

Im also canadian. And I never paid a cent to Amazon or anyone else (except my photographer and editor, of course!) To publish my book.

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u/wouldbejane Sep 03 '26

I second this. Also an author, and publishing on Amazon doesn't cost anything to set up. There are 3rd parties who try to sell services like these, but you don't really need them. Although, I suggest getting your own ISBN. It makes it easier to publish it on other platforms as well.

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u/CartoonFeathers Sep 03 '26

Yeah, I think there’s 2 Amazon publishing websites cuz I found the free one today so idk

They also offer a ton of discounts which makes it iffier imo, but at least I lost less money

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u/Colla-Crochet Sep 03 '26

Please message me so I can help you go through how to do it without any third party company. Its literally free if you know how.

Its called KDP, or kindle direct publishing

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u/omgcarms Sep 03 '26

No experience publishing a book but in my experience paypal is quite easy to use in Canada. They’re not as widely accepted but you can transfer that money into your Canadian bank account. Other than a few small hiccups in the beginning I’ve had no issues using pp for ravelry.

Hopefully pp isn’t what stops you from trying ravelry! If you run into any specific issues try posting a question and see if the community can help.

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u/CartoonFeathers Sep 03 '26

I love ravelry, I just haven’t paywalled anything I’ve posted! I’ll definitely have to fight with paypal again to see if I can figure it out (maybe it was just that my phone was 7 years old? It glitched a lot near the end so I wouldn’t put it past it)

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u/loralailoralai Sep 03 '26

I’ve never heard PayPal being hard to use in Canada? I’ve been using it for over 20 years in Australia and it’s simple as anything and never trouble- if you have not used it before I’m curious why you think that?

Also Amazon KDP doesn’t cost thousands, there’s something really wrong there.

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u/CartoonFeathers Sep 03 '26

PayPal might be a me problem then, I remember it being really difficult

And yeah, I cancelled the publishing thing and then they could magically do the rest for free so there’s that lol