Brought to you by Mike O’Mary and your friendly neighborhood garage attendant publisher.
The world of publishing is changing fast. You can (and maybe should) try your hand at it.
Last month, publisher Gordon Burgett posted an article on the Independent Book Publishers Association website called “One Book Nine Ways in Less Than 30 Days.” In the article, Burgett walks step-by-step through the process of publishing a book using print-on-demand (POD) technology with LightningSource, Lulu and CreateSpace, and e-book technology with those same three vendors, plus Amazon’s Kindle (dtp.amazon.com) and Smashwords. (That’s only eight ways, so I assume he’s counting a traditional offset press run as the ninth way.)
Burgett makes it all sound pretty easy. I’ve been through some of the POD submission instructions, and while it’s doable, it helps to be a graphic designer. Similarly, even Burgett’s boiled down version of formatting files for e-book submission was a little hard to follow. But my overall reaction after reading the article was, “Wow! Anybody can do this!”
That’s when a friend made an astute observation: “I can change my own oil, too, but I have better things to do with my time.” Good point. So maybe publishing and auto maintenance aren’t for everybody. But if you ever have a desire to get under the hood and publish your own book or e-book, Burgett’s article is a good place to start.
Mike O’Mary is founding dreamer of Dream of Things, a book publisher and online community for writers and other artists.