How do I get a book published?

Would you be okay with having it published yourself? It is not as difficult as you might think and it would bypass a lot of the hassle involved in getting a publisher. However, the downside is that you would have to pay for it yourself. I think it can be done in a couple of thousand dollars which you might be able to raise through a “family and friends” sponsorship.

There are several sites where you can publish your book online and then have them bound and printed. http://Lulu.com is a site where you publish “on-demand”. Only print the amount of books you need to publish. It is free up until you print. You can even enlist their services to help you market the book as well at a cost. Its a good place to start.

I only know of this site because a friend writes and publishes his books there.

There are two paths: pay for publishing it yourself (vanity publishing) or have someone else pay for publishing it. Your own goals determine which path you want to take.

Are you doing this just to have a book on your shelf, like a family history or a book of poetry that came bursting out of your heart? Or are you trying to reach the outside world and make $$ as an author?

If you pay yourself, you can use Lulu.com or similar service and get a reasonable printing and binding job done very inexpensively from a PDF. You can get 12 copies or whatever for your friends and your family, and have it done with. Or you can take orders through your website and let Lulu fill the orders and actually make a few bucks.

If you want to find a publisher, you will need to cook up a book proposal. Google that, or look at publisher’s sites, many of them have forms you can fill in. They are interested in a few main things: Who’s gonna buy this book? Why should we believe that you can write it? And how are you gonna help us sell it after it’s published?

Book publishing involves guessing how many copies will sell, putting up the money to print that many, and then hoping that enough sell so you don’t go out of business. The author makes about 10% of what the publisher takes in. So you have to sell a lot more books through a publisher to make the same money you can make selling them yourself. Good luck.