You can publish your own book by yourself, others can publish your book for you, you can also hire someone to write a book for you and publish it in your own name and that is in the case of ghost writing. In ghost writing, all you need is the financial capacity to get it done. But in whatever case, basically, we have only two main ways in which a book can be published. In other words, every single book you see out there today in the world all came through either of these two paths.
But before I must acknowledge that there are also other dubious means to publish a book as we have the hybrid publishing and vanity publishing. But basically, at the end of the day, it’s either you did it yourself, or someone else did it for you while you have to pay the price afterwards. Without this, it’s never going to be get done at all. And it doesn’t matter what kind of book or type of book, who wrote it and how they wrote it. Any single book you would ever see in the world today directly or indirectly followed either of these paths, and one of these two major ways to get your book published is;
- Traditional Publishing: this is a method of publishing which involves the process by which the author submits his manuscript to a middle man known as the literary agent who would represent the author in getting his book published. In traditional publishing, the literary agent stands as a gatekeeper because most publishers are likely not to pay attention to a manuscript that is not from a literary agent even if it’s the best manuscript in the world. This type of publishing requires some amount of patience from your side as an author because you did not have much control over the whole process, including how and when your book is going to be published. Following this path, you have to first find a literary agent who would help you to be accepted by a publisher. The work of the literary agent is to represent you and to help you negotiate a better publishing deal with a traditional publisher. But under this path, it’s important to understand that not all traditional publishers really made use of the literary agent. There are still smaller independent traditional publishers that preferred a direct contact with authors.
- Self-Publishing: another path through which you can get your book into the world is through self-publishing which basically means to publish your own book by yourself. In other words, what this means is that you are all out taking all the responsibilities of editing, producing and marketing of your book. In this case, you have the total control to determine what form your book would be which includes, the quality of your editing, the color and the quality of your book cover and papers. It all lies in your hands. Choosing this path automatically means that you are going into the business as an entrepreneur. You must be ready to take the responsibility to see yourself as a company, a business owner where your book is your product. You bear all the risks, financially, emotionally and otherwise. You are making an investment, now in your book. If it works out well, you have most of the gain, and if nobody buys your book and it fails, you bear all the losses. So it is a path that worth thinking deeply about.
Under self-publishing, there are more pragmatic ways to go about it. If you have some experiences in editing, graphic design, and formatting, you can decide to produce your book alone. But doing it alone can be tedious.
But if you don’t have the skills and expertise, or perhaps you can do it alone but you don’t just want to be a jack of all trade, you can just decide to outsource or contract out these services to a second party, a self-publishing company who is going to handle all of the work for you. All you have to do is to explain to them in details how you want it, and their job is to deliver by birthing your dream. It is wise to hire this publishing companies because they are mostly professionals and they have access to the right tools and the best professionals that would handle the different aspect of your book production. Also in most cases, for the fact that most budding authors do not always know what they really want in the business of book publishing, these independent self-publishing companies are always there to offer guardians and professional advice that would help the author to succeed in the business. But one of the major problems with most self-publishing companies is, as long as making book is concerned, self-publishing companies are always good in whatever services you would ever require of them except marketing and selling of the books they published. For the sake of this deficiency and gap in self-publishing, self-published authors were faced with great challenge which do not allow them to enjoy wider distribution, just like the traditionally published authors.
Finally, self-publishing is a very helpful way to help authors to express control over their own work. It’s a thriving aspect of the publishing industry that is fast rising and which is almost indispensable in today’s world. Even most traditional publishers have also figure out ways to incorporate self-publishing services by creating imprints and departments within their organizations and publishing companies that offer authors the opportunities to exercise full control over their works. It is very vital in every publishing house because it helps the company to remain profitable.
However, in conclusion, having read to this stage, it’s very obvious that traditional publishing and self-publishing are the only two major paths through which a book can be published.
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