What Is Self Publishing?

The dream of writing a book is powerful,
the will to do it is strong,
the perseverance unwavering—
yet the soul must be open and vulnerable

 Self-publishing is the publication of any book or other media by the author of the work, without the involvement of an established third-party publisher. A self-published physical book is said to be privately printed. In self-publishing, the author is responsible and in control of the entire process including, in the case of a book, the design of the cover and interior, formats, pricing of the book, distribution, marketing and public relations. The authors can do it all themselves or in some cases choose to outsource all or part of the process to companies that offer these services.

The key distinguishing characteristic of self-publishing is that the author has decided to publish his or her work independent of a publishing house. In the past, self-published authors had to spend considerable amounts of money preparing a book for publication, and to purchase bulk copies of their title and find a place to store them as they wait for the marketing of the book. However, in recent time Print-On-Demand and e-book technology have come to make the work of self-publishing somehow easier.

Print-On-Demand and e-book technology mean the author, via numerous, accessible global distribution channels like Amazon.com, can have a book printed or digitally delivered world-wide but only when an order has been placed, thus minimizing the cost involved in printing and storage.

As stated above, Print-On-Demand (POD) publishing refers to the ability to print high-quality books as needed. For self-published books, this is often a more economical option than conducting a print run of hundreds or thousands of books.

Many companies, such as Createspace (owned by Amazon.com), Lulu and iUniverse allow printing single books at per-book costs not much higher than those paid by publishing companies for large print runs.Most POD companies also offer distribution through Amazon.com and other online and brick-and-mortar retailers.