What happens next?
You’ve written your book, so now what do you do with it?
Assuming you are not a famous person, or writing about one, chances are an agent or publisher is unlikely to want to take your project on. This is where self publishing comes in.
One of the joys of independent publishing is print on demand (aka POD), which means a book is only printed if and when someone demands it. The cost of printing one copy is the same per copy as a hundred, so you don’t have to order more than you think you need. The best-known and biggest operator is of course Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), who charge nothing to produce the book you upload onto their site. The only costs involved are for editing and cover design, and for someone to design the interior of your book, if you don’t want to undertake this yourself.
Ebooks
For some reason independent authors tend to sell more ebooks than paperbacks. That is certainly the case for me, to my surprise.
That said there are various drawbacks with ebooks. Pictures don’t show up well on some e-readers such as the basic black and white Kindle. And indexes don’t work as they do with a regular print book. At the same time you can include internal links, which are useful in their own way.
Specialist book producers
If you want to branch out a bit and produce a beautifully-bound book, on special paper, that is a joy to hold and behold, you could try a company such as Lifelines Press –www.lifelinespress.co.uk.
For the nuts and bolts of self publishing, click here.