To self publish or not to self publish, that is the question. Or is it?

To those writers out there that have a piece they are working on or have something done and ready to go, the question of whether to self publish or not is getting to be less and less of a question in my book.

EmpowHER highlights one ebook self publishing author who is doing quite well for herself, but has now decided to go with a standard publisher – interesting!

The Scholarlykitchen seems to be bending toward my view. The social media is such a strong force, it opens up avenues for so many people who are interested in publishing their work, it’s amazing. There is self help site that Amazon has started – Create Space, Borders has their site for ebook publishing – bookbrewer,  plus there are the companies that have been at it a while longer like Lulu’s and iuniverse, which is a branch of Barnes and Noble. {Note: when I wanted to get my printed book into B&N I could have done it automatically if I had used iuniverse to print it. Since I didn’t, there is a very long process to do this. On the other hand, Borders leaves it up to their local managers to decide what goes into their store – hence my preference for purchasing books at Borders. Plus Borders has a much better Rewards program than B&N.} I was also impressed with dogear publishing. But it was still a bit less expensive for me to do it the traditional way, since I have done a larger print run for both books and I had consulted with Goblin Fern Press for the publishing of my first book, so the second one was relatively easier to do.

I have used smashwords to epublish my books, but unless you want to spend the time to set it up per their guide – and for a longer book like mine it took quite a bit of time the first time (much faster the second), I would use the option they have to pay someone to set it up for you. I have found out recently that to epublish on Amazon, you have to use their service. I have yet to do this, so I’ll let you know how it goes.

The novelr touches on the economics of e-publishing. It intimates that you can make a lot of money with ebooks, but the catch is the same with ebooks or the regular paper kind; if you don’t have something someone (many someones really) wants, it doesn’t matter how you publish.

Then there is the marketing! That’s another whole story.