4 Quick Steps to Publishing Your Own Blog

It used to be that when you wanted to write and publish your own book, it was an expensive, confusing and difficult process.  But, that was the day of traditional publishing.  While traditional publishing IS still a popular thing to do, its definitely not the "hot" commodity it once was.  Now, with the age of the internet and technology, you don't need to be the next Patterson, King or Grisham to get your book published.  You just need to be able to think on your feet, do things for yourself, and become educated on how to publish your own book!  Below you will find steps on how to publish your book, as well as different options available to you.  It should be mentioned that there is a difference between traditional publishing versus publishing today, on your own as well. Traditional publishing VS. Now It used to be when you wanted to get a book published you had two options.  You could either contact a publisher and HOPE that liked your book and published it for you, or you had to go and get it printed and published on your own and it could cost you thousands of dollars.  But, things are changing nowadays.  Can you still find an agent?  Sure!  But, you can also take the alternative route and do it yourself.  By doing it yourself you can publish both e-books and physical copies, but its much cheaper, and you can do everything by yourself.  You still need that middleman to print the books for you unless you have a large format printer!  But, its much cheaper than it used to be! Setting Your Goals One important thing you need to do before you set out on your publishing route is to think about what kinds of goals you want to attain.  This will then give you an idea of how hard to push with marketing, writing the book, printing the books, making the book available digitally, etc.  If you plan on making a business out of this and you want to be an Author who makes money from books, you should choose both physical and digital options, get a good editor on your own, and make an amazing spellbinding book with a great cover.  On the other hand if you just want to sell or give away a few copies to customers, the content still has to be good, but the cover can be very simple and you can do just digital.  Knowing what you want to accomplish is the best way to figure out where to start in the world of writing books and publishing them.  Once you get that figured out, the rest is pretty easy! Formatting The Book Correctly With a regular publisher aka traditional, you could just hand in a typed up manuscript and they would take care of the rest.  But, in this day and age you need to be a little more technically inclined.  Most all digital sites like Amazon will make you format your book a certain way and have it in a certain extension file.  On the flip side, if you are hiring a printing and publishing company to print the books for you, you also need to have the book formatted a certain way.  If you do it digitally, you are pretty much on your own.  If you hire a company to print and publish the book for you, they will most likely have a format guide available to you, but they will also have coordinators that will check and fix the formats for you before it gets printed.  This ensures that every "Chapter" is on the right page and in the right place, it ensures your paragraphs aren't too long (or too short) and it also ensures that the book looks attractive overall. You Are In Control Being in control is a little more work, but if you spent weeks or even months writing your book, chances are its your baby and you want to make sure that you are included in every step along the way.  I don't blame you!  The great thing about Indie publishing is that whether you are doing it on your own digitally or hiring someone to print and publish it for you, you will always be included in every step along the way.  This includes getting it written and edited, as well as all those small details like a forward, introduction, about the author and, of course, the cover.  Once you send your book over to the publisher/printer and everything is formatted correctly, they will set the book up and give you a preview of what the book will look like before printing all of them  - in fact, some printers will even send you a rough copy in the mail so you can