The 4 Different Ways to Self Publish a Book

Authors have been self publishing their own books successfully for over one hundred years.

Just look at this list of just a few of the well-known authors who all began by self publishing their own book -

Oscar Wilde
Rudyard Kipling
George Bernard Shaw
Mark Twain
Beatrix Potter
Deepak Chopra
Virginia Woolf
John Grisham
Christopher Paolini (Eragon)

ALL these authors began their careers by self publishing their own book. And you can do the same. All you need is access to a computer and an internet connection.

There's never been a better time to easily publish a book and sell it internationally. And the really great thing about being a published author is that it never has to end. Not only can you utilize modern publishing methods to keep your book 'in print' for as long as you want, but you can expand your writing talent and publish more and more books every year - or every month if you've got plenty of time to write.

But publishing books isn't just about writing them, you have to sell them too.

But you need to know where to start and how to do it.

Different Ways to Self-Publish

The problem with reading anything about self-publishing is that there's conflicting statements on almost any website and it's all written in so much jargon that the more you read the more confused you become. But I will cut through all the technical terms and publishing jargon and help you to understand the different opportunities open for you to self-publish your book.

There are 4 different ways to publish a book:

Traditional Publishing
Self-Publishing
POD Publishing
Vanity Publishing

Traditional Publishing

With traditional publishing there is no cost to the author. You can pitch your book to an agent or directly to a publisher to try and encourage them to publish your book for you.

Currently only about 1 out of every 50,000 books submitted are successful. But if your book is accepted for publication it will probably be 18 months to 4 years before your book is in print and you will still be expected to market and promote your book yourself for a royalty payment of around 10% for every book sold. It can be 10% of the net amount, which is what the publisher actually sells the book for, or 10% of the price on the cover of the book.

Vanity Publishing

This is sometimes called Subsidy Self-Publishing but whatever you choose to call it, it means that you, the author, pay a vanity publisher to do all the work that a traditional publisher would have done. You do get paid higher royalties, usually from 25% to 40%, but it can still take quite a while before you break even, depending on how much you paid to have your book published in the first place.

POD Publishing

Print On Demand publishing lets you self-publish your book with minimum expense. POD books are individually printed when an order is placed which means no warehousing costs and this dramatically reduces production costs. But Print On Demand companies are usually only printers not publishers, although they can offer some publishing services. And so it's still up to the author to market and sell their own work.

So before you approach a company, your manuscript must be what they call "copy ready". This means that your manuscript must be formatted correctly, all the necessary pages are included (e.g. copyright page, disclaimer page, etc) and you have a book cover ready for printing.

Self-Publishing

When you publish a book yourself you take on all the work that a traditional publisher would have done for you. This includes having your book printed, shipped, distributed and you also have to take care of all your own paperwork.

Which is best for you?

As we are dealing here with self-publishing, we'll only be discussing the latter 3 ways to publish a book, that is, Vanity, POD and Self-Publishing. Which of these ways you choose will depend on several different factors.

Firstly your choice will depend on how much of the work you want to do yourself. If you just want to get your book published and then carry on with writing the next one, then you may opt for vanity publishing.

On the other hand if you're a bit of a control freak and like to be in charge of the publishing process, then you may decide to go the whole self-publishing route yourself and deal with every company and every aspect of publishing personally.

But whichever way you choose, the choice is now entirely yours.

Ruth Barringham is successful writer, author and publisher and runs two web sites for writers. Writeaholics.net is a web site for freelance writers and Self-Publish Worldwide is a website full of information on all areas of self publishing. So if your interested in writing or publishing, or both, visit these two web sites. You can also sign up for the free monthly newsletter at Writeaholics.net and receive the free eBook 'Become a Freelance Writing Success' when you subscribe, or download a free self publishing report at Self-Publish Worldwide. Or why not do both? After all - they're free!

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