Self Publishing
In the past, you only had three publishing options:
Traditional Publishing— high barriers to entry, no control
Vanity Publishing— expensive and exploitative, little control, no distribution
Self Publishing— expensive and low quality, no distribution
All that has changed with the advent of online book sales and print-on-demand publishing.
Print-on-demand services allow you to create books with little or no set-up costs. This brings your barrier to entry way down. Books are only printed when they are ordered. This means no one has to guess about how many books you might sell, and you never waste money printing books that no one will buy.
The quality of the printing has gone way up in recent years, which means that someone holding your POD self-published book will probably not be able to distinguish it from a “real book.” In fact, the line between self-published books and “real” books has never been less defined. Of course, a big part of achieving a convincing look is good design. It’s the weird little details like font spacing and margin consistency that convince people your book is legitimate or not, so don’t just throw something out there and wonder why people don’t believe it. Still, most of the barriers have been removed, and even the design hurdle isn’t too expensive anymore.
The last step is distribution. It doesn’t matter how good your book is if no one can buy it. Lucky for you, book-buying habits have changed drastically in the last few years.
While it will be very difficult (impossible) for your self-published book to show up at your local big-box book retailer, placement on online bookstores like Amazon is usually part of a self-publishing package. Very few people will ever question the legitimacy of a book because they can only get it on Amazon and not at the bookstore.
