Is Self-Publishing your Book a Good Idea?

Is Self Publishing your Book a Good Idea?Should you self publish your book?

Like many important questions, this one has many answers, depending on why you want to publish your book and what you want to happen after you publish it.

After all, there are so many options these days. Once upon a pre-digital time, if you wanted to self- publish a book, you would need to have a minimal length of at least 16 or 24 pages (in order for it to be bound and to have a cover).

You would have to use expensive technologies such as offset, in which you would have to publish hundreds or thousands of hard copies to make it worthwhile.

Nowadays, if you want to publish hard copies of your book, all you need to do is prepare two pdf’s one of the inner pages and one (twice as wide) of the cover.

Then you head down to your friendly neighborhood printers and print out as many copies as you want, using digital publishing. The price per copy is higher but you don’t end up with a garage full of unsold books.

I usually make thirty copies of my recent children’s books using the digital press across the street, then sell them, and then make thirty more.

Self-publishing eBooks is even simpler and more versatile. Your book can be one page long, or five thousand (physical binding of the book doesn’t matter).

Your books can be square or in any other configuration you like and in one of many formats. With Ourboox, eBooks can have embedded videos, and moving maps. This is not something you can do with a printed book!

If your book is commercial and related to your own business, then it often pays to publish it yourself. Ourboox offers two platforms that make it easy to create and share your ebook, in page-flipping HTML5format, or as a pdf document.

With Ourboox, you have the ability to edit at any time, to add hyperlinks, videos, moving maps etc. to make your book exciting for readers.

You can share the URL far and wide. And best of all, on Ourboox the search engines help popularize each and every published book (now more than 110,000).

If you are publishing for fun, then self-publishing your own eBook is an excellent option. It can save you thousands of dollars. And you can always go and print out a few copies to share with family and friends.

Ebooks are more fun to create and read than regular blogs, and people tend to remember more of what they have read when the document is in a page-flipping format.

If you are self-publishing in order to try to sell your books, then I would suggest looking at Amazon Publishing, with two reservations.

First, you will have to do the marketing yourself. Amazon has many millions of eBooks and yours will not stand out unless you are prepared to the tiring marketing work that is required. Keep in mind that according to Guy Kawasaki, the chance of selling more than forty copies of your book (or eBook) on Amazon is about one in ten.

And secondly, it is extremely difficult for a lay person to create a book with pictures using Amazon’s CreateSpace software.

You need to download the software to your computer, and then uploading your story is rather daunting, unless you are an expert.

Whenever you self-publish, you want to maintain your copyright, but that is not always the case. For each site and company, you will have to read the fine print yourself. Many self-publishing online services retain some of your copyright privileges, which is annoying in itself.

Ourboox has an extremely lenient policy in which the author own his/her content and can ask to remove it from the site at any time (this practically never happens).

Ourboox only has the right to share the books as long as the writers want. In the future, Ourboox authors will be able to make money by receiving donations for their eBooks.

This I think is a win-win situation in which the books are free to share and be shared, but income can accrue from good Samaritan readers who want to lend their support to writers of their choice.

Finally, there is the question of professional writing. If you wish to become a professional writer, then traditional publishers often refuse to consider content that has been published previously on line (unless tens of thousands of people have read it).

Although this attitude is old fashioned and myopic, it is still the standard.

So if you want to send a manuscript to an agent or publisher, it is advised not to self-publish it as an eBook first. One possibility is a hybrid approach.

Self-publish your fun and non-commercial content online while pitching your professional writing to traditional publishers and agents. That is the advice I follow myself.

Is Self Publishing your Book a Good Idea?

Should you self publish your book? Like many important questions, this one has many answers, depending on why you want to publish your book and what you want to happen after you publish it.

After all, there are so many options these days. Once upon a pre-digital time, if you wanted to self- publish a book, you would need to have a minimal length of at least 16 or 24 pages (in order for it to be bound and to have a cover). You would have to use expensive technologies such as offset, in which you would have to publish hundreds or thousands of hard copies to make it worthwhile.

Nowadays, if you want to publish hard copies of your book, all you need to do is prepare two pdf’s one of the inner pages and one (twice as wide) of the cover. Then you head down to your friendly neighborhood printers and print out as many copies as you want, using digital publishing. The price per copy is higher but you don’t end up with a garage full of unsold books. I usually make thirty copies of my recent children’s books using the digital press across the street, then sell them, and then make thirty more.

Self-publishing eBooks is even simpler and more versatile. Your book can be one page long, or five thousand (physical binding of the book doesn’t matter). Your books can be square or in any other configuration you like and in one of many formats. With Ourboox, eBooks can have embedded videos, and moving maps. This is not something you can do with a printed book!

If your book is commercial and related to your own business, then it often pays to publish it yourself. Ourboox offers two platforms that make it easy to create and share your ebook, in page-flipping HTML5format, or as a pdf document. With Ourboox, you have the ability to edit at any time, to add hyperlinks, videos, moving maps etc. to make your book exciting for readers. You can share the URL far and wide. And best of all, on Ourboox the search engines help popularize each and every published book (now more than 110,000).

If you are publishing for fun, then self-publishing your own eBook is an excellent option. It can save you thousands of dollars. And you can always go and print out a few copies to share with family and friends. Ebooks are more fun to create and read than regular blogs, and people tend to remember more of what they have read when the document is in a page-flipping format.

If you are self-publishing in order to try to sell your books, then I would suggest looking at Amazon Publishing, with two reservations. First, you will have to do the marketing yourself. Amazon has many millions of eBooks and yours will not stand out unless you are prepared to the tiring marketing work that is required. Keep in mind that according to Guy Kawasaki, the chance of selling more than forty copies of your book (or eBook) on Amazon is about one in ten. And secondly, it is extremely difficult for a lay person to create a book with pictures using Amazon’s CreateSpace software. You need to download the software to your computer, and then uploading your story is rather daunting, unless you are an expert.

Whenever you self-publish, you want to maintain your copyright, but that is not always the case. For each site and company, you will have to read the fine print yourself. Many self-publishing online services retain some of your copyright privileges, which is annoying in itself. Ourboox has an extremely lenient policy in which the author own his/her content and can ask to remove it from the site at any time (this practically never happens). Ourboox only has the right to share the books as long as the writers want. In the future, Ourboox authors will be able to make money by receiving donations for their eBooks. This I think is a win-win situation in which the books are free to share and be shared, but income can accrue from good Samaritan readers who want to lend their support to writers of their choice.

Finally, there is the question of professional writing. If you wish to become a professional writer, then traditional publishers often refuse to consider content that has been published previously on line (unless tens of thousands of people have read it). Although this attitude is old fashioned and myopic, it is still the standard. So if you want to send a manuscript to an agent or publisher, it is advised not to self-publish it as an eBook first. One possibility is a hybrid approach. Self-publish your fun and non-commercial content online while pitching your professional writing to traditional publishers and agents. That is the advice I follow myself.