I’m Just Sharing

Publish Your Own Book

Posted by Mitch on Mar 28, 2008

I’ve written one book, and ended up self publishing it. Personally, I think most ways are easy to do it, but many people seem to freak when thinking about giving it a shot.

A friend of mine sent this link from the Online Education Database’s blog iLibrarian titled How To Publish Your Own Book that was pretty good, and gives one way of doing it, along with some writing tips. It’s only abou5 five minutes long, so it’s well worth watching.

Another article you can look at that might give a little bit of insight on book publishing was written by a guy named Shawn Fawcett, titled Book Publishing: Problems With The Traditional Model, as he talks about problems people sometimes have with publishers if they’re hoping to make money from their books.

What I did with my book was, after multiple edits, take it to a professional printing company and told them I wanted it to look like a paperback. I gave them a pdf copy, selected a white cover with dark blue printing, which kept the cover simple, and for around $1,200 I got 300 copies of my book. Now, let’s think about this for a quick moment. True, I didn’t get a fancy cover with colors and images, but because of that I got 300 books that are mine, that I can sell for whatever I want (ever give a couple away for free every once in awhile as promotional material), and I even have an ISBN number which means I can list it on Amazon or wherever and call myself a publisher.

Options are always nice, and information on how to do it is pretty nice also, isn’t it? I’m not going to hawk my book now, but I am going to hawk the one below:

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The Harry Potter Series

Posted by Mitch on Dec 22, 2007

Harry Potter is the best selling series of books in history, and made its writer, J. K. Rowlings, a billionaire; absolutely amazing. There’s a great review of the entire thing hereif you don’t know much about the stories.

Of course, like most adults who were open minded enough to give it a try, I got into the series the wrong way. I started with book #5, rather than from the beginning, before I had seen the first movie; don’t ask me how that worked. Then I listened to book #3 and #4 before I saw the second movie, and then book #6 and, finally, book #7. At that point I thought I was pretty knowledgeable about everything, but thought more about it and realized that there was no way I could have been, because in the last two books, there were names mentioned that I didn’t know.

So, I decided to start from the beginning, the first book, and work my way back through the entire series. And, instead of reading them, I decided to listen to them instead. The reader of the books on tape, or CD, is named Jim Dale, and he’s a supreme reader, one of the best I’ve ever heard, as I listen to a lot of books on tape, as I’m on the road often. I would recommend to anyone who really wants to see just how well these books were written, and what all the hubbub is about, should do the same thing. Yeah, the first book really is a lot of kid stuff, but after that, the books start touching upon some adult themes. You’ve just got to read this stuff; trust me here.

And, now, maybe I’m good enough to play the game below.