What is your Self Publishing Goal?

Before setting off on a self publishing route, you have to determine what your goal of self publishing is. Self publishing - seeing the book from manuscript into a bound copy is the easy part, but the hard part of self publishing is the work that surrounds it, and the biggest of all - how to market your product. Your goal will be determined depending on the size of your project, who your audience is, how much time you have and finally, how much money you have.

The time factor and the finances you have available to you go hand-in-hand. The time factor is the time you need to spend in getting your written project into a book format and then out to your audience. What will you do yourself? If you want to do the editing and layout, then you will need the time to do that. If you are going to contract this out, then you need the time to find an editor, respond to the changes and then find a layout and design person to do the preliminary work prior to going to the printers. Of course there are book printing companies that can take care of all this for you. It depends on how much you want to spend on editing, design and layout, and the printing.

There are many options for the printing too. This will depend on the size of your project and who your audience is. If you want for example, a children’s book, photography, or recipe book printed, then you would most likely go full color (4 color process). If you have a chapter book or memoir, then only the cover needs to be color. The binding styles will differ also, such as coil, hardbound or soft cover. You will also have to make paper choices and determine how many copies you want. This will depend on the finances you have available.

All of the above depends on your goal and audience. Are you intending the project be for family only, thus a few hundred copies. Do you want it to to be delivered to a niche market, such as attendees at sales seminars? Do you want it distributed to a mass audience? Where it is to be distributed will depend on the resources you have, including your time factor and finances available to you.

Your self publishing goal should be a well thought out marketing plan, that takes a sales widget (your manuscript) from inception to a finished product and then distributed to the public depending on the finances available. Not sure you want to be CEO of a publishing company? Then you might want to re-think the self publishing route.

(Comments Welcome - What’s your take on self publishing?)

Tags: book printing, editing and book layout, self publishing, self publishing goals