When You Write a Book – Should You Self-Publish?

You’re writing a book – should you self-publish? While in the past going the ebook or Print on Demand (POD) route was seen as vanity publishing, that’s no longer the case. The big benefit of the DIY approach is that you get to keep all the profits.

The Web has changed the way authors think. A decade a go, every book I wrote was for a major publisher. Although I didn’t make much money, the books did boost my brand – any my ego.

The Web has changed everything. Nowadays I – and many other established authors – self-publish. It’s sensible.

When speaking with established authors, I’m hearing that nine times out of ten they prefer to self-publish their books as ebooks, first.

Here are some comments I’ve received when I asked why authors did this:

* I can publish my ebook with a few clicks of my mouse in days, rather than years. Since I’ve got a mortgage, it makes sense…

* Eight or 15 per cent looks silly next to the 100 per cent profit I make from self-publishing…

* I love it – when I publish online, I have direct contact with readers…

Should You Self-Publish?

When you sell a book to a publisher, it’s a long process. First you write a book proposal, and send it to your agent. By the time the agent has read the proposal and sent it around to publishers, a year has passed before you get a contract.

Another year passes before the book hits the bookstore shelves, and depending on the size of your advance payment (which is always against royalties) yet another year may pass before you get royalties.

So traditional publishing takes around two or more years from when you get an idea for a book, to the day the book is for sale.

Contrast that with self-publishing. When I get an idea for an ebook, the average time it takes for me to write the book and get it online and selling is around two months, sometimes less.

Other benefits of self-publishing include:

* You can see the results of marketing your ebook or POD book at once – in increased profits. You’ll still need to market your bookstore-book, but you won’t see the profits (if indeed there are any) for years:

* You can write six books in the time it previously took you to write one, simply because there’s no waiting around for others to read your work;

* No rejections. You write it, you sell it, and you get the money, instantly;

* Your ebook acts as a book proposal. An editor at a publishing house may see it and make you an offer, which you can accept… or not, if you’re making good money with the ebook.

Is self-publishing for you? That depends on your business model, and why you’re writing your book. However, more and more, authors are seeing that DIY is the way to go.

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For free weekly writing information sent to your Inbox, subscribe to Angela’s Fab Freelance Writing Ezine at [http://fabfreelancewriting.com/ezine/fab-freelance-writing-ezine.html] and receive “Write And Sell Your Writing: The Power-Write Report” immediately.

Author: Angela Booth
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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The Book of Esther: A Story of Love and Favor Available on Amazon

The Second Book in the Daily-Bible-Reading Series is now available on Amazon:
The Book of Esther: A Story of Love and Favor
By: Deborah H. Bateman
Check it out at:
http://tinyurl.com/74xne2o

Be sure to check out the beautiful reviews of the book

I hope you enjoy reading it and studying The Book of Esther

May God bless you all!

Self Publishing Era: Digital Publishing Tears Down Walls

Since the birth of publishing, authors have been forced to deal with the middlemen of this industry; the publishing houses. Often some of the best authors are turned away at the door because they are not “recognized” enough. Sometimes the best talent is rejected because big publishing houses just do not have time to look over all of the manuscripts. Well the times have changed. Now authors can self publish their material for next to nothing in the form of an ebook. While many traditionalist stubbornly claim that “customers won’t buy ebooks”, nothing could be further from the truth. Some ebook authors make exorbitant amounts of money. What’s better is they get to keep most of their profits. If you are thinking about writing a book, consider publishing it in ebook format. Here are some of the benefits of ebooks…

Lower costs than self publishing

Larger returns than many traditional publishing offers

Work on your own terms

Constant and growing profits

Here are some of the downfalls of self publishing ebooks:

You must learn online promotion strategies

Effectively you are the author, distributor, webmaster and many more positions

May require some knowledge of web design, book design etc etc

As you can see, digital publishing is not all fun and games. If you are serious about promoting your book online you should understand that you will no longer be just an author. You also take over the publisher’s role and become your own distribution agent. If you’re willing to sit down and do a little learning than transforming your book into digital format may be the right thing for you to do.

To learn more about digital publishing visit http://www.zizzoo.com. Alternatively if you are ready to start writing and designing you ebook check out http://www.zizzoo.com/guides/ebook

Author: John Sweeney
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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The Book of Esther: A Story of Love and Favor

I am so excited to announce to you that The Book of Esther: A Story of Love and Favor has been downloaded to Amazon and should be available tomorrow. It is a Daily-Bible-Reading Study of The Book of Esther. It contains 18 lessons consisting of: a commentary, the daily Bible Scripture, the prayer of the day, and a few thoughts to ponder which I call things to think about. It is a book about love, God’s favor, and a bit of history. I really enjoyed studying The Book of Esther every time I went through it. I am sure you are anxious to get your copy, so help me keep an eye out for it on Amazon. Let me know when you spot it on Amazon. Let’s see who will buy the first copy!

How to Write and Publish a Children’s Book

After reading many, many books to my daughter, I decided to start writing my own children’s book. How hard can it be? You write a cute story about some animals having a picnic, get published and have the money roll in. Yeah, no that’s not how it really works. Writing and publishing children’s book is not as easy as it sounds. You have to remember that you’re writing for little kids who have a understandably limited vocabulary and very precise taste. Based on my own experience and a bit of research that I did, I came up with some advice on how to go about writing and publishing children’s books.

Start by deciding who you’re writing for and what you want to write about. Remember that children of different ages and genders are into different things. Three year boys generally like Thomas the Train and Cars while the girls like princesses and tea parties. Of course at some point they all like things animals, boats and birthday parties, but it’s up to you to decide what to write about and for whom. Try not to follow trends because by the time you write your book and get it published, there’s a good chance that the trend may be going down or is over. Once you’ve decided on a plot, characters and who you want to reach, remember to respect your readers. Just because they’re little doesn’t mean that they need to be lectured by your morals or spoken to like they’re dumb. Children are very smart and have very strong opinions.

Once you’ve written your first draft and added the pictures, go back to the drawing board and think about how to improve it. Is there something or someone that you can add to the story to make it more memorable? Will your audience want to come back for more? Is the story and the pictures of the right maturity level for your audience and will they connect with it? When you have gone over this a few times, then it’s time to put your story to a test. Give copies to people that you trust and ask them for their opinion. Go to a children’s school and read the story to the kids so that you can see their reactions.

Once you decide that you are completely satisfied with your story, find a digital printing company. Make sure that you get a digital printing company because you want your wording and your pictures to be sharp, clean and precise. Digital printing is the best way to go about getting this done. Be sure to let the book printer know if you want to print a hard or soft cover book, how you want your margins set, and that they should put your name and telephone number on each corner of each page of the book. This is a very important step so be sure to be clear about what you want. How many books you decide to prints depends on how many publishers you want to send your book to. If your strapped for cash, instead of printing a book, you can print loose pages. I recommend printing a few extra books because the first twenty publishers may very well turn you down.

When you get your books from the publishing company, do some research on publishing companies. Find out where to send your books and to whom. When you’re ready to send your book to the publishers, have a short cover letter saying why your book is different from anything else on the market. Don’t compare yourself with another author. That author is already out there so you should be unique. Once you send your book out, all there is left to do is to wait. The publishers get thousands of books a day so it will take some time for them to get to yours. Most importantly, don’t lose patience. If it doesn’t work out with the first book, write another one and see how that goes. Good luck!

A digital printing company Printing a few copies of your children’s book may help to make a good first impression when you send your work to a publisher for review.

Author: Aleya Bamdad
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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