I know NOTHING about publishing. What would the difference be, between self publishing, publishing with a famous company (Ex: Penguin Books) or a publisher no one knows about? Would it matter who published it? And these interesting online book publishing sites like Lulu Seems pretty decent, I made a mock book, hardcover, and it seemed a decent publish site. It was something like 0.015€ a page. That's 1.5 euros (2 dollars?) for a 100 page book. I could get a decent book for 4 bucks. Good huh?
It makes a big difference. Self publishing is just that -- you do everything yourself. All the printing, design, marketing, selling, etc. Publishing with Penguin or some other such publisher is a big deal, but it's hard to get them to publish something you've written as an unknown. You need an agent to even hope to get in with one of those guys. They'll give you an advance and will provide some marketing. Small publishers are still hard to get into, but more do-able for an unknown author. With them you have to do a lot more marketing (although even if you're with a big pub, you'll still have to market yourself), but you might run into issues such as the publisher didn't have enough money to pay the printer to get your book published by the release date that had been set. (I just heard this one the other day from an author who has had several books published with a small publisher. He had to essentially advance *them* the money to get the books printed on time, and he had set up some talks, etc., where he was going to be selling the books. He did make the money back, but OMG -- what a problem. That's not something that would happen at Penguin.)
IF you could re-reply with my new find of publishing on the internet. Seems more like what I would do for the first 30 volumes or so of the book. For friends and such. And charity sales. EDIT: Of course it's not fancy. maybe a black book with a title on it, and no illustrations. Nothing fancy.
If you just want to publish something for family and friends, then either some place like Lulu or a local printshop for hardcopies. If you want something to sell (ie, turn professional) - then you're in a whole 'nother ball park, my friend, whether you go self-publish or trade publish. And as chicagoliz pointed out, you need to know a lot more than how to format your book if you're going to self-publish as a professional.
Yes, well as I said I'm young, and what's more even if it get's published it will sell 5 copies... So to start I'll maybe give them to charity sales or something. Get it read a bit. Maybe on amazon once it gets decently popular.
If you're looking just at electronic publishing, you could probably find info on the net. Amazon has a self-publishing arm. You could also try smashwords and see if they're workable with what you want. Check out some writing magazines, too. They have ads for e-publishers. I have no expertise in this area, so I'm just trying to suggest where you could look for more info. The kirkus reviews site also has a new blog for writers and a new service wherein you can pay them for a professional review, so they're trying to be more helpful to self-published authors. You could check out their site as well.
I'm not trying to burst your bubble but... your book will probably never get "decently popular" if all you do is sell 5 copies in charity sales - if you even manage to sell 1 copy, at all, let alone 5. If you're hoping to become recognised as an author, I suggest you keep polishing your skills, wait a few years, write a good manuscript and try the traditional route, because even those who go trad don't always make it big and then disappear - and these are people even the pros thought would sell. However, if you're just wanting to have a physical book in your hands and would just love to give it out to family and friends, then by all means do it. But think twice if you're thinking of making any money or getting any recognition from this.
Not really money or recognition at the start. Maybe if some random dude buys it on Lulu I'll envisage.
