Before the boom of the internet world, the traditional publishers are the kings of the publishing world but now, there are the Cafepress, Lulu, Createspace and others that will help you to publish your own book online.
One of the main reasons for this is the fact that with the economy down, publishers are rejecting more and more manuscripts. When it was hard to publish your own book then, it will be harder to publish nowadays. And you can’t really do anything about it because it is true that most publishers right now do not have enough budget to print your book.
Self-publishing on the other hand can instantly publish your book at a lower cost… but still with a cost. This means that you need to have the budget for it, otherwise forget about publishing your own book.
There are different online publishers that will produce your book, print them and ship them as well as distribute them for a fee. An example of these are the three companies that were mentioned earlier Remember that although these self-publishers will be doing all the legwork, you still need to pay them for all the services that they do. The great thing about this is when the book becomes a hit, you get all the profits from it.
Today, the successful self-publishers control the benefits of the services of print-on-demand. Self-publishing outlets such as Cafepress, Lulu, Createspace and others like them can print books on demand. This means lesser books are printed if the demand is not that high. In fact, they can even print it as the customer demands it.
As the author, you don’t have to worry about anything. You just have to collect your profits from the publishing outlets where you get royalties from. But with self-publishing, you have a say on everything including how much your book is going to sell in the market. And as an additional input, Cafepress, Lulu, Createspace self-publishing services can accept uploaded digital contents like Microsoft Word documents, PDFs, text files or even Rich Text Format files. The format, size and design of the publication will depend on what the book author wants. But the difference of these online self publishing outlets with Publish on Demand capabilities to a typical self publishing in your neighborhood lies on the fees. The self-publishing outlets will not charge you anything until there’s an order coming in.
That’s the only time that these self-publishing companies will charge for the service that they have rendered. When you look at it, it will be a win-win situation for both parties. Another vital difference is the fact that traditional self-publishing companies will not help you market your book. You need to market it yourself. But if you however have go to the POD capable self-publishers, you can be sure that they will help you sell your book. They after all have a stake in them too.
There are of course additional charges that an online self publishing service will ask of you. Services like cover design, layout and proofreading your manuscript should of course be your responsibility. If you want to ask for these services, you have to pay extra.
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