There is an outright BOOM today in self-publishing. And the question becomes, why do thousands and thousands of writers today opt to publish their own books? Here are some of the reasons:
- For many, the initial motivation is simply that they don't want to spend years fighting an uphill battle to pursue literary agents and conventional publishers...with a slim chance of success.
- Others want to retain rights, want more control of the creative process, or want a bigger share of revenue.
- For some, it's the subject matter: books on niche topics about which their authors are passionate, but which are too specialized to interest a commercial publisher. These are ideal for self-publishing.
Conventional publishers tend to look down on self-published books. Often they cite glaring writing errors, amateurish layouts and cover designs, or other problems that are seldom seen in books from larger publishers. Frankly, this attitude is sometimes justified.
But, there is absolutely no reason why a self-published book can't meet professional standards. For proof, below are just a handful of books that were originally self-published:
- What Color is Your Parachute (Richard Nelson Bolles)
- In Search of Excellence (Tom Peters)
- The One-Minute Manager (Ken Blanchard)
- A Time to Kill (John Grisham)
- The Joy of Cooking (Irma Rombauer)
The bottom line? If you have the passion to write about a subject you love, the time and skills to prepare a quality book for publication, the confidence to take some financial risks and, most of all, the determination to promote and market your book proactively, you can self-publish successfully.
[The above post was created from excerpts taken from U-Publish.com 5.0. co-authored by Dan Poynter and Danny O. Snow.]
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