Though I've written, oh, several novels (I've lost count), I've felt that the world and I can bear up under the idea of them remaining in manuscript and not between the covers of a book.

With the advent of POD technology, self-publishing has become much cheaper and more accessible. It is largely responsible for the huge rise in the number of books listed as being published every year.

The disadvantage you cite--of not being able to get the book on the shelves in stores--is huge. It effectively means no copies of the book will be sold. Despite the easy availability of books online, the vast majority of sales are still made in physical stores. Amazon sales are a drop in the ocean in comparison.

'Successful' self-publishers will cite sales of 5000 copies. A commercial publisher would regard a book that sold 5000 copies as a failure.

Various claims are made for self-publishing, and many of the less scrupulous vanity publishers are quick to exploit their customers' ignorance of commercial publishing. They will often provide a marketing plan that includes sending copies of the book out to reviewers. Many equate that with getting the book reviewed, but it doesn't equate with that at all. One major spec fic magazine, for example, throws away all the self-published books they receive for review--they can't even give them away to charity, as they have no value. Nobody wants them.

Even if a self-published book happens to be excellent, it has to fight its way through a morass of s/p books that simply aren't. Thousands and thousands of them. It has to fight off the stigma of being self-published, a label that implies to anyone in the commercial publishing industry that it's badly written, badly (if at all) edited, and, basically, not worth the paper it's printed on. The writer will have to do all their own publicity, get their own reviews and their own signings, while dealing with reviewers and stores that are offered s/p books so frequently that they dismiss them without a second thought. All at their own expense, without even an advance to draw on.

This isn't to say that there are no self-publishing success stories. There are a few, and the same ones are usually brought up whenever this topic is raised. They are, however, very few compared to the number of failures.

For example, PublishAmerica, which claims to be a commercial publisher, but which is generally regarded in the industry as a vanity press that turns very few books away, has published 1000 books that have never sold a single copy. Not one.

Personally, I want my books on shelves in bookstores. I definitely think that there are niche markets that work for POD, particularly nonfiction targetted at a small audience, but children's books I don't see.

Well, let me put it this way. I've got about three months left until I'm going to be a mother. I've been going to *bookstores* to look at what kinds of books are out there for children nowadays and I sincerely doubt that anything will drive me online for this. Children's books, IMHO, would work even worse as a self publishing option than adult books.

Now, starting your own publishing company is a lot of work. I believe in a previous topic many moons ago the conclusion was: Do you want to be a writer or an editor? You have to do printing, marketting, research, sales...

There is a common refrain amongst self-publishers: writing the book is only 10% of the work. The other 90% consists of marketing your book, and you have to treat it like a full time job. You have to issue press releases, attend trade shows, arrange for TV and radio interviews. Your book becomes your business.

There is a tremendous resource for self-publishers on yahoogroups.com. I suggest signing up for the self-publishing list.
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/Self-Publishing/
(Note: don't confuse Self-publishing with a hyphen for the selfpublishing(no hyphen) group. The no hypen group is a minimal activity group about comic books. You might want to sign up to this list in digest form as they sometimes generate over 1000 posts a month.) You will learn a LOT by reading the comments on this list by self publishers. You have to be a member of the list to read the archives. There are several very successful self-publishers (including Dan Poynter) who contribute to this list, and several of them are children's book authors.

Your friend should also buy (not borrow) a copy of "The Self Publishing Manual" by Dan Poynter, which is the bible of self-publishing.

Here is another good resource:
http://www.creativemindspress.com/misc.htm

Your friend should make the decision to self-publish on whether she is willing to do the additional work to make the book a success. You won't be able to fill in by proxy for her. She should spend time researching the field and teaching herself the mechanics of what will be required. She'll have to learn about ISBN numbers, book wholesalers, printing, and self-promotion.

It's a difficult call, and not a decision to be made lightly. Stay away from vanity presses (you lose copyrights when you use them and they will never market your book properly--sometimes not at all.)

And for heaven's sake she should be doing internet research on the topic before making her decision. There is a ton of information out there on self-publishing: just GOOGLE it. Become knowledgeable. And she should treat it like she would any other business, with a business plan and a marketing plan in writing.

Treat with caution anything that talks about "traditional publishing" ; "bricks and mortar bookstores" ; "my book was rejected because it was too controversial" or tells you that you can sell loads of books online.

My brother set up his own publishing business and it was a lot of hard work. As a small press, he had to edit, format and print the books. He had then to commission the art work, and promote the book, which for a small press means personal visits so they take you seriously. By the time he had achieved some success he was too tired to keep it going. Also the income was much poorer than his previous job, despite working harder and longer hours.

I agree with Buffy, though. From what I've seen these self-publishing companies make a ton of cash while their customers flounder around waiting for "royalty" checks that never come.

I plan on puting all my energy for the time being on improving my work and selling my novel to the editors and then when I get my long-awaited break (thinking possitive) I'm going to pretend I self published and work my butt off to sell my book to the public.

Think of it this way: To be a self publisher, you (the owner of this publishing business) would, after hours of research and writing a business plan, take your manuscript, format it in a desktop publishing program like In-Design, get price quotes from printers, commission someone to do the artwork for your cover, research and acquire the ISBN, LCCN, CIP, SAN and BISAC codes, contact wholesalers and book distributors like Ingram and Baker & Taylor, send out press releases, build a website, market your book in every imaginable way.

Sounds like a lot of work, doesn't it? Print-on-demand, or vanity presses, will promise you that they will do all that, when in fact, what they usually do is: buy your copyright to your book (read the fine print, fool!) by providing you with their printing services. They won't be able to get you into the distribution channels for bookstores because they refuse to accept returns, which is a standard industry practice. Traditional booksellers abhore vanity presses and generally won't carry the books. A vanity press will swear your book will be a best seller, when a substantial number of books never sell beyond what the author buys. And as for marketing your book? Forget it.

There is a legitimate market for self-publishing out there, but you do need to be alert. The links I provided earlier will get you into the real world of self-publishing, not the pseudo-world of vanity presses.

Self-publishing by whatever means always implies the lack of a gatekeeper, whether an agent, an editor or a publisher. Anyone can publish their own book--there is no standard to which they are held. The book may be good, bad or indifferent, but the only judge of that is the person who wrote it and is putting it into print. The stigma applies regardless of what name you give it.

Yes, there is a lot of unsuccessful trash in amongst the plethora of titles being churned out annually by self-publishers. And yes, mainstream booksellers cast a wary eye on anyone who is self-published. But the industry is changing. Do a search on the topics of "self-publishing" or "small press" at Publisher's Weekly http://www.PublishersWeekly.com to see how the industry is reassessing this industry. Mainstream publishers are now eagerly picking up works by small press publishing houses once they've established a track record in sales.

I don't know that I would readily recommend the self-publishing route for fiction writers. It's harder to market a fiction book in a way that overcomes the mass selection printed each year by traditional publishers. Some successful fiction writers have addressed specific niches with their text. At one point, books written for older women fit this niche description; now publishers are seeing this as a viable demographic. One author I know formed a self-publishing company writing dog care manuals, targeted to a very specific audience (which he was selling very successfully). I'm aware of a self-publisher who has written a medical book on radiology that is too specific to make a profit for a large publisher, but as a self-publisher he can get it out into the hands of the people who need it, and still make a profit for himself.

And yes, one has to be aware of the fact that if a traditional publisher has rejected your manuscript, it COULD be because it's an inferior work... in which case, self-publishing will never be enough to make it sell.

What I'm trying to say is that you can't dismiss the entire industry as disreputable. There are a lot of great titles currently available in the small press/self-publishing industry. But I agree that there is a lot of stuff out there that is a waste of good paper. Much of the stuff that gets printed via vanity publishers and print-on-demand is pure crap that should have been tossed out with the slush.

Whether or not a company is reputable is not what distinguishes self-publishing from vanity publishing. Vanity is one way to self-publish. There are others, including the lulu/POD route, but it's all still self-publishing, even if you try to pretend your book has been published by a legitimate small press. Self-publishing does not suddenly become a good idea just because you're not being ripped off, it only becomes a cheaper bad idea .

There may well be a few nuggets of gold in and amongst the vast majority of s/p works that are, simply, trash. However, most readers have delegated the task of searching through the trash and trying to find those nuggets to agents, editors and publishers. I don't have the time to read eleven thousand PublishAmerica novels in order to find the one that's worth reading, and nor, when it comes down to it, does anyone else. Certainly not the editors at PA, or they'd spot the hoax submissions before accepting them for publication.

Lots of novels that are now regarded as literary classics were indeed self-published, but in a very different market and atmosphere from today's. What worked for Twain or the Brontes isn't necessarily going to work now.

If you're, however, going to write a book for a mainstream genre like "space SF" or "fantasy".. then you're going to reach more people by doing the mainstream method.

I'm not ripping self-publishing. My short stories that don't get accepted after a few years are getting put into a file and might end up in a lulu compendium sometime down the road after I've given up on them.

But that doesn't mean I expect them to sell.

A few of my very targeted stories might end up self published.. but.. by and large, everything I do is sports-fiction, scifi, fantasy, or thriller.. all of those have a large target market, and therefore printing on Lulu or other such press's sounds interesting but.. truly.. isn't.