You may have done market research and tried to interest a regular publisher only to be rejected. To find a regular publisher, you have to write up a book proposal with a letter, a synopsis, and up to three chapters of your book. It can take years to even receive a nibble or rejection. In addition, many publishers look to recycling undergraduate and master's degree textbooks as a means of profits instead of publishing new works. Publishing your e-book, however, provides a great alternative to help you meet your aspirations as a writer.
When you publish your book with a regular publisher, you relinquish your leverage by signing over many rights of your book to the publisher. To get that seal of approval from a regular publisher, you'll receive an advance and royalties. Some publishers only pay royalties or purchase the book outright, while others pay advances and expect the author to use the money to promote their book. The negotiation process is a laborious and complicated one which can be mind-numbing.
When you publish your work as an e-book, you receive the primary income from the book, not the publisher. You don't have to wait for the next quarter to see money from your book nor will you have money withheld against print book returns.
Publishing your book as an ebook yourself means you have full control of the look, cover, format and contents. Of course, if you want the book to sell, you'll still want to have it professionally edited, formatted, and have a dynamic cover created for your work. Nevertheless, the final result is yours and yours alone. No editor is going to change your vision into something acceptable to a large, faceless publishing company.
In addition to the creative aspect of your work, you will also be in charge of formulating and executing a marking plan that best works for your particular book. You decide what percentage of a sale you'll give to different vendors for promoting or selling your book. You have much more say in the pricing of your book than if your e-book were released by a regular publisher, where you'll have little to no say in pricing
The CNET article "How to self-publish an ebook" provides tips on publishing an ebook. This includes setting the price on your book low enough, sometimes less than $4.99, in order to incentivize weary readers to take a look at your book instead of sticking to bestseller lists.
Smashwordssimplifies creating your ebook and getting it into circulation. It features e-books published by little know, independent publishers to one of the largest independent publishing networks in the world. Self-publishers such as Booklocker, CreateSpace, and Lulu can also help get your e-book to market. While you can do much of this yourself at CreateSpace and Lulu, you can also buy packages to ensure that your book has a professional appearance.
The ABC article, "EBooks: Could You Be the Next Self-Published Star?" shares stories of authors who actually made money as self-published e-book authors. E-book sales are on the rise. According to the article, although book sales across all platforms grew just 3.8% between 2009 and 2010, e-book sales grew a whopping 164.4% over the same period. While writing, self-publishing, and marketing a book as an e-book is not for every author, e-books are a positive way to get your story out to the public by your own means and on your own schedule.
Elaine Hirsch is kind of a jack-of-all-interests, from education and history to medicine and videogames. This makes it difficult to choose just one life path, so she is currently working as a writer for various education-related sites and writing about all these things instead.
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