When it comes to self publishing one of the first considerations has to be cost. Before you can take the leap of faith and begin publishing your book you need to know how much it’s going to cost you.
I’d like to be able to give you a nice rounded number here and now, but I can’t. Books are different and there are also several different publishing methods open to you so you need to take all this into consideration.
To start with, you firstly need to have a publishing budget. Any business investment (and your book is an investment) needs to have a budget. And it’s okay to have a budget of zero dollars, as long as you realise that without any money upfront, you’re going to have to do all of the work yourself if you want to self publish your book for free.
On the other hand, if you have $100 or more to spare you can enjoy the luxury of someone else creating a book cover for you or paying someone to format your manuscript. These services help because they not only save you time, but professionals can probably do a better job.
So take some time to sit down and work out your budget BEFORE you start looking at your publishing options. And there are plenty of options for self publishing.
Next you need to know what sort of book you’re going to publish. Is it a hard back book? A soft cover book? A PDF eBook? A Kindle eBook? All these different ways to self publish cost different amounts of money.
You also need to know how you are going to publish your book and you have 3 choices:
- vanity publishing
- self publishing
- eBook publishing
Vanity publishing is by far the easiest way to self publish. A vanity publisher can do all the work that a traditional publisher would do, but whereas a traditional publishing company would absorb the cost themselves, a vanity publishing company charges the author for its services. And some vanity publishers can charge up to $10,000 while others offer a “free” self publishing service, but they usually have high fees for every book sale.
Self Publishing, on the other hand, means you do all the work yourself, and most of it can be done for free. You can download book cover software to create your own covers or you can design your own eBook covers with free software like Gimp.
You can also format your own book interior on your own computer and add all the necessary prelim pages such as the copyright page. Then you can upload your files to free online book publishing companies such as Lulu.com who can then print and ship your books.
Or you may want to publish your book as an eBook instead. This means it can be done for free or at low cost. There are eBook companies that will format your manuscript files into eBook files and can even provide a cover image. Or you can simply create your own cover image and upload your files for free to eBook publishing sites such as Amazon’s Kindle eBook site or Smashwords.
But before you can do any of this, you need to have a good understanding of the publishing process and how it works.
You need to see your book as an investment because that is what it is and once published, you can go on selling your book for years.
So don’t be afraid of spending a little money on your book to get it published and make it great.
If you want to self publish every book you write and work at home as a self published author, then why not invest in Self Publish Worldwide.com. This is a downloadable course in one huge eBook. Go to the website now and download an extract for free.
Author: Ruth Barringham
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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