Self Publish Books

Self Publish Books to Supplement Your Income

Visitors to the Internet are hungry for information. Informational products are among the best selling items online.

Consider what you have learned in your career, from your hobbies or other pastimes or from your travels. Perhaps you have picked up some useful information that you can self publish in an e-book and sell on the net.

Traditionally, a budding author would have to find an agent or publisher to take him on. This is hard to do and can be tricky. There are many scams, such as fees to have your book read and edited, but which do little to actually help it get published. Please see Warning and Cautions for Writers.

Another form of self publishing that existed long before the Internet is known as "vanity" publishing. An author pays a printer to print and bind a run of his book that the author than has to try to sell on his own. With eBay and other online auction sites, this is easier to do than ever before.

Another good way to self publish is to write an e-book. This is a book that just exists as electrons and is never put onto paper. There are certain advantages to this type of publishing.

The upfront costs are low, mainly the time you invest in the book. You don't have to keep an inventory or be concerned with shipping and handling costs. Best of all there are online services, such as Clickbank that specialize in selling this type of product. Everything is automated for the author, who just has to collect the checks for his sales.

Of course you have to get sales. eBay or Overstock online auctions are a good place to start. You can also use a Google Adwords campaign (you don't need a website to sell this kind of product), rent an opt-in e-mail list (to avoid spamming) and send out ads or sell the book from your own website.

One of the best ways to get an e-book sold is through affiliates. They write about your book on their web sites, in e-mails they send out or in their newsletters. You pay one-third to one-half of your sales price in commissions.

Again Clickbank specializes in this type of program and does all the work for you.

Consider this manual on self publishing Make Your Knowledge Sell. This e-book will help you get your knowledge into writing and it will also give you resources to use to sell your finished product.

Conclusion

Of course, self publishing is not for everyone. You have to be able to write and have something to write about. You have to be able to provide a book that either supplies information that others are looking for or that entertains. The former is easier to do than the later.

Consider your life and what you've learned. You might have a book in you.