The 10 Reasons That Convinced Me To Become A Self-Publisher

Here I share my favorite reasons for becoming a self-publisher. Some reasons are much more important to me than they might be to you. But I am certain that on this list you will find a reason that is important or intriguing to you. I hope that you find one that gets your internal capitalist into gear, and gets you onto a new path too.

1. Retain Ownership: As a self-publisher you retain complete control and ownership of the book – forever. I’m sure that for all of you reading this article, this is a very important reason – as it was for me.

2. Instant Credibility: The book will instantly give you credibility – and help boost your career or business. We all want this. The more professional your book is, the more credibility you will have with your audience. With self-publishing you can easily and quickly make improvements to your book – especially with an ebook.

3. Control Fate of My Book: As a self-publisher you control the fate of your book – not some publisher that has no interest in your book or subject other than how much money they can make from you. Self-publishers are writing and publishing books because we love our subject, and want to share our knowledge with others.

4. Speed to Market: Traditional publishers take way too long to bring your book to the market. A big publisher would think that you are a silly fool to believe that you could get your book into a world-wide audience within a few weeks. But of course, we now all know that we can – and do.

5. Plenty of Help Available: As a self-publisher you can choose to be involved with as much, or as little, of the creative process. Self-publishing is where you, the author, bypass all the intermediaries that are involved in traditional publishing. These intermediaries do the editing, designing, illustrating, marketing, promotion, etc., of your book. As a self-publisher these functions will typically be your job. Although, you can easily hire people to do these functions for you and still be considered a self-publisher. As a self-publisher you get to choose which functions you want to do, and which ones you need to hire someone to help you with.

6. Keep All Profits: As a self-publisher you keep all of the profits. A traditional publisher will keep almost all of the profits. Then, after several months, when your book sales start to slow down, they will dump you for someone else that is more profitable for them. Even if your book makes you just a few hundred dollars a year, these profits will come to you year after year after year. The more effort you put into making your book look professional, and into your marketing and sales, the more profit you will make. You have complete control as to how much success your book will have.

7. Low Entry Cost: It is much less costly to produce a book now than it has ever been before. You can get an ebook online with a big-name website for free within minutes. You can also get your book accepted by a big-name print-on-demand company that will distribute your book to the entire market for about $112. Additional expenses like ISBN fees, and CIP fees, will add about $100. Hiring a professional cover designer can be anywhere from $250 to $750.

8. My Knowledge of The Market: With some effort and study, you can do a much better job promoting your book than a traditional publisher can. This is especially true when your book is directly related to your career or business. You know your market, your audience, your customers, and your readers, much better than anyone else does. This intimate knowledge of their needs is what will help make your book and career a success.

9. Niche for Success: Your book’s subject might fit into a very small niche – one that is too small for a traditional publisher to even bother with. Filling a small, tight niche is where the money is for many self-publishers.

10. Creative Outlet: Self-publishing is a great way to satisfy your need to be creative – writing, designing, and illustrating – as well as being creative with marketing, advertising, and promotion. Self-publishing will force you to be creative in many areas.

Joseph C. Kunz, Jr. is an author, publisher, educator, business manager, and entrepreneur. Life-long love affair with books and reading. Very excited about being part of the new media movement. Known for casual, easy-to-read writing style and ability to explain complex topics in an understandable way. “If you are serious about your work you should self-publish. Retain creative control. Retain the profits. Enjoy the satisfaction and status that comes with being published.” Visit Kunz’s website about all aspects of self-publishing at http://www.KunzOnPublishing.com/, for an insider’s guide to becoming a financially successful and happy self-publisher, and sign-up for his free newsletter.

Author: Joseph C Kunz, Jr
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Alternative energy

The Art of Ebook Writing and Self Publishing

To write great eBooks, all you need to focus on is the content of your book. Write on the subject to keep it simple and interesting for the people who will benefit from reading your book. The most important benefits of self publishing your eBook is that there won’t be any rejections, no change in thoughts presented in the book as there won’t be any editing on the content, make big profits by selling lots of copies, build a list of readers who appreciate your work and best part is the information is your valuable contribution to everyone who benefits from reading it.

The creation of the book and publishing it on the web is easy, especially if you follow simple instructions and take guidance from authors of the many free books available online. The cost associated with this activity depends on the kind of audience you want to target and the promotional activity you want to undertake for your book.

To start publishing your book the first requirement would be to format the content of your book and for that you can either go for professional help or proceed to complete the task on your own. Give your book some time and perform the proof reading activity. If your book is in PDF format then the best option is to lock your book before sending out to the market. This would secure your book and only allow your customers to extract the content and will prevent others from copying your work.

Next you need to create a graphical image for your book as this will help increase sales. Creating an eBook cover with professional help is an expensive affair. The best way to go for cover creation would be to use the available software packages and minimize the cost.

Do you want to learn how I build a list and make money online? I’ve just finished writing a brand new FREE ebook called ‘7 Steps to Profits and List Building with Article Marketing’.

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http://www.mrarticlemarketer.com

Author: Jason A Osborn
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Solar panel, solar power

So You Think You Want to Self-Publish Your Novel?

If you’ve already read my previous article about the truth of the publishing industry and how difficult it is to break in and become the next star novelist, then you may find this next commentary interesting. In the past ten years, new opportunities have cropped up for would-be, frustrated authors. Print-on-Demand and Ebooks hit the market, tempting unpublished novelists with promises of do-it-yourself fame. Some authors have actually been able to gain some success through these avenues, but most authors who travel the self-publishing path remain just as underpaid and anonymous as before.

For the sake of this article, I will focus on the Print-On-Demand opportunities. Ebooks may be okay for some things, but to date, Ebooks are not turning enough revenue for me to consider them interesting.
 
The key to self-publishing is first and foremost the quality of the product. It is vital to an author’s success to have a completed, very well written, perfectly researched, and highly polished product before self-publishing. Secondly, it is important that the book publisher produce a product that looks aesthetically appealing. Some Print-On-Demand books are very high quality, which is a good thing. But oftentimes, the author has to pay someone to prepare a book cover and put together the book block, the interior pages. This can be costly. If you are an author on a budget, you may not have any other choice but to provide cover art and a strong PDF version of your pages. Some of the software used to produce either product can cost hundreds of, or even a few thousand, dollars.
 
Prolific authors shy away from self-publishing because they know that to follow that path means their next novel won’t be written for a minimum of a year. Why? Because they will spend that time preparing the book block, the book cover, and then promoting what they produced. Promotions are costly. An author with a lot of money in the bank can simply hire a publicist. But the average author will have to do all the promotional work themselves. Promotions can pay off when a publishing house suddenly notices this self-published phenomenon, but it takes a tremendous amount of work, a great book, and some savvy footwork before a publishing house even cares to notice. Without a doubt, successful self-published authors throw themselves into heavy promotional work. Think in terms of radio shows, internet marketing, print marketing, speaking engagements. You will suddenly be lifted from the profession of writer and thrown into the profession of advertising executive. Most ‘artists’ don’t care to participate in this venture; they prefer to go on to the next piece of artwork. But a frustrated author can have the ambition and the drive to actually make it work.
 
Bottom line: Do your homework, know exactly what you want out of the deal, understand the amount of work and promotion it will take, and have the best product you can produce.  
For more tips, keep your eyes peeled for future blogs and articles by author C. D. Blizzard

Copyright 2008 C. D. Blizzard

C. D. Blizzard is the author of Blackwater, Broken, and Profile. Want to take a peek inside this prolific author’s life? Visit one of the most popular blogs on the web. http://www.cdblizzard.com

Author: C. D. Blizzard
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Android apps

Self Publish E-Books – The Planned Approach

You probably want to know the planned approach that will work wonders for selling your writing (ebooks) on the Internet. Well, here are the steps for a planned approach:

1) You have access to the Internet and a computer.

Notice I didn’t say you’re paying to be connected or have a computer you own. I used the word “access” which means you could do your self publishing from your local library or even at an Internet Cafe with computers.

2) You have an idea for an ebook

Before you start writing your ebook, you want to determine if there is a market. Why waste your time writing something that isn’t going to sell? There are many, maybe thousands of writers on the Internet who did not research their market and are now suffering the consequences of zero sales.

Don’t you be one of them.

3) Once you’ve done your research, you write your ebook

You must have a finished ebook. Too many times writers jump to producing a web site first, then write an ebook. This will cause you to have problems with the next planned approach.

5) You buy a domain name

If you buy the domain name before you’ve named your ebook, you have less of a chance of getting targeted (meaning buying) customers to your web site. Your domain name should specify exactly what you’re selling.

For example:

My name “a good read” was acquired before I knew the above. Yes, it’s EZ to remember but it doesn’t spell out exactly what I do. Is it a bad name? No, but it’s not as good as if I chose “Makingebooks.com” for my domain name. It would have expressed what I do better. But hey, after 10 years, I’m attached to agoodread.com.

6) Set up your hosting company

You must have a domain name before you can buy hosting. The hosting company needs to have a valid address to put on their servers.

7) Next is building your website.

This can mean from one to several thousand web pages. But if you have one product (ebook), then you should have four pages.

These include:

  • Opt-In Page
  • Sales Letter
  • Order Page
  • Thank you Page

The opt-in page is extremely important and I’ll go into that in another post but, for now, simply understand and accept your customer will not buy from you the first time they visit your site.

8) An Autoresponder is an absolute necessity.

I didn’t know this when I first started. I let hundreds of thousands of visitors come to my site and did nothing to keep in further contact with them. Don’t you make the same mistake.

9) Another essential item in your Planned Approach is a Shopping Cart

Yes, you’ll need a way to process orders. It can be as simple as using PayPal or any other online merchant like 2Checkout which accepts credit cards.

10) Bring traffic to your site.

Now this is where most writers fall down on the job. You can have the best ebook on the Internet but if nobody knows about it, your sales will reflect this.

There are other parts to the Planned Approach but these will get you started on the right path to self publishing your ebooks.

Judith Tramayne’s “EBook Learning System” has (7) Videos which show you how to make your ebook (2) times better using free software at: [http://www.agoodread.com/makeebook.html]

Author: Judith Tramayne
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Unix inter-process communication (IPC)

Self-Publishing – Can It Be Done?

In the past self-publishing a book was next to impossible unless you were very rich, and very sure that you were able to sell the book once it was printed. Whilst sending a manuscript to publishers promises much less work to the writer who is then free to do what he does best; write stories, there are now alternatives. The obvious path of making a download-able eBook can often be a poor choice because books which people can feel are still favored. After these two choices all that remains is self-publishing.

Any writer will eventually meet the obstacle called marketing but the self-publisher has the added problem that once his books are printed he needs to find a way to distribute them effectively. This involves dealing with bookstores both online and offline in order that the books may actually be purchased. Advertising the book thereafter can be accomplished through many different means. The bottom line being that the writer needs to communicate the idea of the story at every opportunity and any way he can. It could be through sample chapters online, or viral videos that relate to the storyline, or even a simple review by somebody offline or online. The more people that catch even the remotest glimpse of the book, the more people that are likely to think “I wonder if it is any good… it sounds alright”. Books don’t sell themselves. Just for a moment imagine yourself receiving a delivery of books to your door, and at that moment you have to find an audience to sell them all to. This is probably the part you didn’t dream about when you chose to become an author.

At the very forefront of self-publishing technology is the ability to print copies of books as they are needed minimizing the risk that writers face with their hard-earned cash. http://www.lulu.com/ offer a service whereby the writer can create a book for free which is then available to buy through popular bookstores such as amazon.com and Barnes and Noble amongst others (note: purchasable worldwide). This leaves the writer with a slightly smaller task of getting the book known through any means he/she can possibly think of.

Helping you on your way to becoming a successful writer [http://successful-writer.blogspot.com/]

Author: Harry Hillier
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Digital economy, mobile technology