Are you ready to embark on self-publishing?

​Are you excited to get your written work out to the public in the form of a ‘book’ or ‘e-book’?

​This goal could be both exciting and overwhelming at the same time. 

You’re an author. You know well what you write about.

​You might be an expert of a certain subject matter. ​But you might be new to this business of book publishing. ​

​​Yet, there’s this confidence in you and you feel that you could make it in the book publishing world. And you ask, ‘Why would that not be possible’, right? After all, every aspiring author you hear about these days could be a publisher of their own work. ​​

From there, you could see or read about more instances how new authors are becoming popular in their ‘own niche’. And they are embracing the concept of self-publishing. 

Becoming your own publisher is a viable option to traditional book publishing. You do not have to get a validation or approval from the big bosses. You can decide what you want to do, or how you want to go about with your book publishing project. ​​​

True enough. There are huge opportunities with self-publishing. With new technologies, we could see new formats. And then more trends could influence the tasks involved in creating a book.

Self-publishing as a business is growing so fast. In fact, with the rapid pace of digital technologies, a self-publisher realizes there’s so much to learn about, given the whole process. 

Very few are that great at totally knowing every aspect of self-publishing. So, it is important that you know your level of expertise when it comes to initiating, planning, executing and completing the book project. What skills do you already possess that you could use when doing your own creative project?

Whether you’re a new author or a seasoned publisher, and just like 'any endeavour' you could think about, being at the forefront of the self-publishing business means that you’re always giving yourself a room for improvement and seeking opportunities and knowledge.

Education is vital to hone your skills and equip yourself with creative and technical knowledge. ​

​No matter how we try to perfect it, there’s always something that we could fall short of.

​And if you think you know everything, you better try to re-examine that thought as there could be some essential elements that you could miss out on to accomplishing a bigger, better project.

What level are you at self-publishing?

​Let us classify levels according to:

​‘beginner’;
'experienced ’; and
​‘self-publishing pro’.

YOU'RE A BEGINNER SELF-PUBLISHER

You know that you’re a 'beginner' if you have little knowledge in many aspects of book publishing.

​You may be a confident, excellent writer or author.  But you may not be comfortable with many other technical areas. You feel you need help with editing, formatting, generating ISBN, book cover designing, and coming up with pricing decisions and distribution.

YOU'RE AN EXPERIENCED SELF-PUBLISHER

You know that you’re an 'experienced, knowledgeable self-publisher' if you have already published a title or two. You are familiar with the process and you welcome growth in your self-publishing business. You probably need some knowledge refresher in book publishing business or want to see publishing trends. Perhaps, you need some help in book promotion, content marketing, social media marketing and improving your author marketing platform. 

YOU'RE A 'SELF-PUBLISHING PRO'

You know that you’re a ‘self-publishing pro’ or likely to be at this point when you have achieved quite a level of success in publishing your own work, or perhaps a client’s project and have been receiving good feedback. What you probably need in the process is how to improve 'discoverability', distribution and sales.

Whatever level you might be on, there’s always an opportunity to increase your knowledge and expertise.

Better yet, if you are ready to explore self-publishing professionally, you can begin and learn how the pros do it. ​

​For new self-publishers, Amazon and IngramSpark are two of the publishing platforms you could explore to publish and print on-demand books. 

With the use of print-on-demand technology (or POD), you can publish or do print-on-demand (as the name implies). That means you can order and print only what you want (say ten books to hundreds). And you can decide on that.

Also, you can explore color printing for your book project and choose from their available book formats.​

They can also give you access to over seven billion book lovers across the globe. That is with their expanded reach program. And, of course, other marketing options.

Need e-book distribution? Both publishing platforms can also offer e-book distribution. That means you can get connected to all top outlets in digital distribution. ​​

​FEEDBACK

​Have you used any of these publishing platforms for your self-publishing project before? If not, what self-publishing platform are you using or have you used in the past? What was your experience?

​Share with us your feedback in the comment section below.