Virginia Heffernan
If encouragement and awareness are important to authors, Virginia Heffernan is making it easier for you to write a book. Her New York Times article, Author Unbound makes it abundantly clear that self-publishing is an increasingly respected way to get your book out.
Once termed, “vanity press,” self-publishing was practiced mostly by rich people who could afford to print 1,000 books, even if they only sold 100 of them.
But the advent of desktop publishing, e-books, and print on demand (POD) has changed all that.
The Bowker company reports that self-publishing is up a whopping 181% over last year. In fact, 764,448 titles were self-published in 2009. In other words, as Heffernan reports, book publishing is becoming publishing.
As author of over 75 information products, I can attest that self-publishing is not limited to just print books. People are producing e-books, audio CDs, and video programs, too.
The process is incredibly easy, if you have a book shepherd or someone giving you good advice.
You can attend my self-publishing seminar on June 23 in Detroit or order my ( self-published) audio CD and e-book, How to Create and Sell Information Products.
Find a print-on demand vendor such as Lulu, Xlibris or iUniverse to deliver the finished product and you’ll be amazed at how a book can amp up your career, once word gets out.
Which reminds me, getting the word out is the hardest part of self-publishing. Most authors radically underestimate what it takes to sell a book.
If you were to write a book, what would it be about? Please comment below.
Tags: bowker, michael Angelo Caruso, new york times, self-publish, virginia heffernan, write a book
Hey, thanks for these great numbers. I hope your seminar yesterday went well.
I am writing a book right now (a murder mystery in space, haha), and when the time comes, may very well consider self-publishing. At the blog I work on over at style-matters.com, we write about this sort of stuff a lot. You might find some of it interesting… http://style-matters.com/blog/the-future-of-self-publishing-looks-bright.html
As for how to get the word out? http://style-matters.com/blog/three-tips-for-smart-social-networking.html !