You Can't Slap Someone Up Side the Head with an E-Book! (Or, How to Publish your Book in Today's World)

Ever had that urge to write a book? Just about everyone has at one point or another; you may even have a complete manuscript hanging around in that bottom desk drawer. Maybe you even have several! Unfortunately if you have done any of the "usual" searching around as to how to get your name into print, you most likely have run up against the wall of: "You must submit your manuscript to several editors at various publishing houses where it will sit in the "Slush Pile" and perhaps never get reviewed.

What about that E-Book that you only sold 6 copies of at 99 cents on Ebay? That's not too fulfilling!

Maybe you have even looked up some of the smaller publishing houses in the "Writers Guide for 20xx" only to find that most are fairly specific in what they take, how many they will look at, and "I'm sorry but we have our quota for the year, in fact for the next 100 years". What about self publishing?

Well, you can do that and many authors have become wildly successful that way, however what you don't hear about is that there are even more authors who lost their shirt doing that too! Setting up a publishing house on your own to promote a book is a full time business with large up-front costs...or at least it used to be: Enter "Micro Publishing" or "Books on Demand".

Did you know that you can have one of Amazons subsidiaries publish as little as 25 of your books (some micro publishers will print and bind as little as 1 copy!) and they will list those books on Amazon! Basically this means you don't even need a printer to set up your publishing house today, just a computer and Internet connection and you can write, publish, and sell your books. Amazon is not dumb, they know there are people out there who can write books that will sell big, and they want to be there to cash in on that. Did you know that "Eragon", the book about the dragon rider that is now a major motion picture was self published? Not only that, but it was written by a 15 year old boy? Now the book is selling in the millions and that "boy" is financially set for life.

That could be you and I as well! And now there are tons of "Micro Publishers" and "Books on Demand" services out there that are competing for your business. That means prices are falling in this wild new area of information marketing.

And speaking of marketing: What if you happen to own a small printing house that does short run books, pamphlets, cards, etc.? Here is a new market you can get in on! What if you advertised that you will do micro publishing for customers and actually take care of their entire fulfillment process? You could automatically take orders, print small runs, do the bindings, warehouse the inventory, advertise the book, and, if the book really takes off so that you can no longer handle the volume you could cash in big time when you sell the publishing rights to one of the "Big Boys". There is quite a few opportunities in this market, and I believe we will see publishing move more and more into this model.

Already Amazon and others are rushing into this market, but the great thing is, those individuals (whether they are 9 or 99) that just do not have the resources to go the "traditional" route to publishing, can now put their ideas out there! Some of those ideas will be great, but would never have seen the light of day at any other time in history. This truly is a cultural trend in my opinion that will have far reaching consequences. In my own business I have a motto "Words that Sell the World", but in all the history of Mankind, it has been "Ideas Change the World", and this new trend will only accelerate that.

And that is a good thing.