Self Publish Your Book - You Will Need to do Most of the Work Yourself Anyway

Not too many years ago the only way to get your book published was to send a manuscript to a large publishing house and hope they liked it enough to publish and distribute it. Even then, there was no guarantee of success because the publishing houses did little or nothing to promote a book unless it was written by a well known author or likely to garner some impressive sales. Whether it might have been in the best interest of the publishing house to promote a book did not seem to matter, advertising dollars were only pumped into those works most likely to return multifold returns for the publishing house.

Another drawback to having a large publishing house publish your book that is still true today is the distribution of revenues from sales of YOUR work. If you are "lucky" enough to have a major publisher "accept" your work and publish it, you are on your way to receiving pennies on the dollar for each copy they sell. Did you ever wonder why you are given such a small percentage of the sales revenues - maybe as little as 2 percent? Well, it boils down to corporate profits and shareholder dividends. Almost all of the large publishing houses are publicly held stocks, and like any other stock, shareholders expect double-digit growth on their investments. That, combined with huge CEO and executive salaries, corporate inefficiencies, and a need to show profits, means that they can only pay you - the author, the one that did all the real work - a few cents for each copy of YOUR book that they sell.

There is an alternative, Print on Demand, POD. Several POD printing firms have sprung up in the last decade, making it easier for an author to get their work published. With the Internet online bookselling marketplaces growing as they have, it is even possible to market your own book alongside those published by the biggest publishing houses out there. Other than a marketplace commission of about 15% on the sale of your book and the price of printing, you do not have to give anyone a penny to publish your book. On top of that, you do not give up any of your rights to your own work.

It no longer makes much sense to beg a big publishing house to publish your book. Of the hundreds of thousands of books they publish each year, few make the authors rich anyway. Why not take the entire matter on yourself. You will need to do most of the marketing yourself anyway, and setting up a website to promote your book, writing some articles to draw attention to it, and mailing it to customers that buy it will secure the profits for you instead of some corporation.