Self-Publishing

Publishing your book is like remodeling your house: you can be Bob the Builder, doing all the jobs yourself —permitting, electrical, plumbing, drywall, framing, painting—or you can hire a general contractor who hires and oversees all the sub-contractors. The first tack is cheaper but requires learning a lot of new stuff, and is hugely time-consuming. The second costs more, but leaves you free to focus on writing your next book and/or marketing the book you’ve published.

Bob’s publishing jobs (after the book is written):

1. Getting it edited by someone who’s a pro, not your friend or your English teacher;
2. Finding a publisher. The big dogs are Amazon/CreateSpace, Kindle Direct Publishing, Ingram/Spark, Lulu, Smashwords, BookBaby;
3. Formatting your book for printing;
4. Designing a cover, or (better) hiring a professional to do it;
5. Sending your completed files to the publisher;
6. Proof-reading the files;
7. Sending the proofs back to the publisher;
8. Marketing, which is a whole nother topic.

Or, you pay for a one-stop solution, perhaps from the same publishers. More on this coming soon.