E-books changed the way books were read as well as published. Traditional publishers are so inundated with submissions that often very talented new writers are overlooked for established writers. Where it used to be a very difficult to get yourself published pre e-books, it is now fairly easy for anyone to publish their own work via self-publishing. Writers do not have to wait indefinitely to hear about rejection of their MS anymore, they have the option of publishing on their own and keeping almost 70% of the earnings for themselves as compared to 10 – 15% that they could expect if they went the traditional publishing way.
Publishing Options Available to Authors
Since traditional printing is still very much in existence, we ought to begin with it as some of you “wanna be” writers would still be eating your heart out to be published by big publishing industry names. Let us be honest, it does give quite a kick to be an author of one of the traditional publishing giants. So let us look at the publishing options available to a new author.
Traditional Publishing
As the name suggests this is old style publishing where you complete your manuscript and then submit it to the agent, who looks for suitable publisher interested enough to publish your book. The likelihood of your manuscript being accepted are thin and if you are lucky to have it accepted by an editor at a good publishing house, there is still a lot of work left to be done. You will have to change the manuscript, rewrite it according to the editor's suggestions and it may be years before you may see the print version of it. Traditional printing has now made its advances in e-books as well and a lot of big name publishers are coming out with books on the electronic platform.
Print on Demand or POD
POD technology is a fairly new entrant in the publishing world. As the name suggests, POD books are printed only when an order is received. This means that the books can be printed in small number even in single copies. The technology became available only after the advent of digital printing that allowed smaller number of prints per run, unlike the traditional letter press and offset printers that required a minimum print run of a few hundred copies as it was not economical to run the printers for only single or a few dozen copies. Print on demand technology has made it very easy and cheap for author-publishers to publish their work in print media without spending a huge amount of money on printing thousands of copies which could potentially be sitting for years without being sold.
One of the best POD platforms is Amazon's CreateSpace. It is a free and you have creative control over all your work. It is easy to create your account and then you have access to great tools to create and publish your book. It distributes your book across the globe and even helps you create an e-book for free. There are many more that you can explore such as Infinity Publishing, Lulu, Picaboo, etc. Here is a more comprehensive list of POD publishers.
Kindle Direct Publishing or KDP
Any self-published author will certainly have heard of KDP. This is the mother of all e-book publishing platforms and hardly needs an introduction, except to the really newbies. Setting up a publishers account is easy just log click on the KDP link here and you can get started on your journey to self-publishing. There is a very comprehensive guide available on site to guide you through the process once you have created your account and logged in and set it up. The process is simple you just have to upload your book in the required format. They accept MSWord and HTML. Go through the guidelines to know more about how to format exactly for the platform. Once your manuscript is up you need to upload the cover image. Now you are ready to hit the publish button. Once you click on it, your book is available online in the e-book format. Other e-book publishers include BookBaby, Folium Book Studio, Kobo, Smashwords, etc.
Vanity Publishing
Vanity Publishing is an off-shoot of the traditional publishing practices. Big publishers are into publishing big selling authors for the simple reason that it is easy to sell them and the profits are greater, so a lot of aspiring authors never got a chance to see their own work in print. This gave rise to a genre of printers and publishers who took some money from the authors upfront to cover the cost of printing and publishing the books and then distributing them. This meant that the author was in essence paying for their own book to be published and distributed and had no control over the print run or the distribution. This is not a great way to publish your work as you would be better off publishing on your own. But if you do not want to go through the palaver of editing, proofing, creating the ready for print MS and creating cover design etc. you could hire the services of a Vanity Publisher. Some such publishers include Lulu, CreateSpace, etc.
The lines between self-publishing and Vanity publishing is increasingly being blurred with little to distinguish between the two, except that platforms like CreateSpace and Lulu, do not ask for any money upfront from the authors.
Crowd Funding, Blogging, Forum Posts
Online communities are providing excellent opportunities to the newbie authors to publish their work and build up a reputation for themselves. Blogging sites like Tumblr and Wordpress have provided authors to publish their writing as blogs that people can read and comment upon. Most of these blogs can be created for free or for a nominal yearly fee. There are several writers' forums where stories and essays and even books can be posted for peer comments and feedback, giving you a good resource to build your talent upon. Another recent trend has been crowdfunding websites that have started offering self-publishing authors the opportunity to offer their work to investors. Crowdfunding works two ways, it provides you money to publish your book and also gives you an insight into how your book will be received by the public. If your idea is inspiring and interesting your funding will be bigger and you will have more investors. This should give you a fair idea of how you will fare in the market. One good place to start for crowd funding is Kickstarter. There are other platforms like PubSlush that offer you full service including crowdfunding and printing support.
If you wish to become a published author these days, you have a lot off options available for you. Your only concern would now be to write the book that will sell and then to market it.