The truth about self publishing is that it has turned itself into the most viable form of taking care of one’s publishing needs. A young author, a newcomer or someone who just wants to publish his or her scrapbook, poems, recipes or thoughts written down over the years can do it by him or herself. Today the publication of a book is as easy as ABC. All you need is an updated computer with access to the Internet, some software knowledge as regards to html, notepad and perhaps excel to publish your book with Amazon’s CreateSpace, Lulu.com or Google’s Partner Program. There’s practically nothing to it if you possess this kind of skill, the know-how, to sit down and upload your manuscript, title pages, front and back covers directly to these giant online companies who are bent on changing the publishing industry from what they were. The days of going from one publishing company to another and being turned down by each one of them is a story that many writers, and some of the great ones at that, can relate to you. The typical way or traditional publishing as it is being called nowadays is to find an agent who would decide if your work was marketable or not. A lot of good authors have been turned down because of this and somehow managed to get their book out by him or herself and in many cases it has turned out to be a bestseller. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that yours will be in every tabloid, on the news, in a signing, get a lot of blurbs. No, not at all. Maybe no one will hear of you and even when you publish it by yourself you’ll have to have the necessary capital to foot the bills. Okay, one of the advantages in self-publishing is that you have the power over and you’ll reap all the benefits from your marketing strategies, but be mindful of the fact that you’ll have to finance it. You’ll also have to take care of your design, type space and letter setting and all of that calls for the disbursement of more money. It can be done today and very easily if you fulfill all the parts of self-publishing. It’s only a matter of being able to upload your material.
Having the money, self publishing can be done by anyone today. It is very easy to carry out. However, a lot of people, writers, authors, novelists, etc. prefer to go by way of a publisher. They do not have the time and expertise to carry it out by themselves, so they’d rather go through an agent and forget about the technicality in producing a book. It’ll cost you. But if your book is good, marketable, they’ll publish it for you. So you have the channels to sell the book. And, again, if it’s salable, they’ll turn your dream into reality. Here we’re not trying to talk about getting published; we´re talking about publishing your book by yourself. This is what is available to us as authors, and publishers, and if you have the know-how, publishing a book is a piece of cake today.
Self-publishing is a blessing to writers because you eliminate the intermediary. It’s a do-it-yourself world, and the advent of both the computer and the Internet have given us this possibility to be published, to do the publishing by ourselves. You can produce your book all by yourself. This is the important point we’d like to concentrate on. We don’t want to talk about marketing a book, or book channels, or how to write one. We want to talk about publishing one, and the truth is it’s easy to do. We have to be thankful to the coming of the Internet, computers and the programs that come along with them because they’ve given us access to information. They’ve put it at our fingertips. It is for us to take and make use of, and you don’t have to go out of your way to do it anymore. If you want to learn about any given subject, let’s say, etymology as an example. All you have to do is punch the word into one of the search engines and you have all the information you need about the subject matter at hand. Okay, you’ll have to read it to understand it, but the fact is that it’s at your fingertip now. You don’t have to waste time and go out and carry out any research for it. You can save all that right here on the screen.
We've reiterated the point time again in everything we have to say about self publishing: If you're an emerging author and you don't count on a lot of resources, it's best for you to learn how to publish your own book. You can do it with very little money. The important thing here is that you have to do it by yourself. You simply learn how to upload your material to one of the major platforms and click submit. They'll do the rest and your book will be out on the POD system.
At Wade Hilton from Jamaica we’re willing to help you publish your book for free. But it’s a do-it-yourself situation. We can take you by the hand and lead you through the process step by step for the sake of self-publishing. If you need a helping hand to get published, just let us know, and don’t forget that your comments and opinions are always welcome. Let’s hear them right here.
Do you have a fantastic story about self publishing? Share it with us right here! Let the world know how beneficial writers have become with this trend of getting their books to the public.
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