Aspiring authors have a tough road ahead of them. Traditional publishing houses are merging into large conglomerates at an alarming pace. Acquisition editors at these houses are pressured more than ever by the bottom line. At several traditional publishing companies editors must meet with the sales and marketing teams before they can acquire a manuscript. This focus on the bottom line costs both authors and publishers time and money. Therefore, aspiring authors are seeking out self publishing in large numbers.

Self publishing allows you to have more control of the publishing process. This control may be a turn off for authors that just wish to write their manuscript. If you just wish to write and not worry about marketing and other production details then you will have a tough time succeeding at even a traditional publishing house. To be a successful author today you need to actively participate in the whole publishing process especially if you are going to self publish.

There are various levels of self publishing including online and offline. Offline self publishing refers to selling hard copies of books either through book stores or online. Online self publishing refers to publishing e-books. E-books are electronic books and are created in a digital format. E-books are available for download as a digital file onto your computer. Many e-books are in Adobe PDF format. E-books have risen in popularity in recent years.

In self publishing you can choose to just create books for offline use or online use. Many Internet entrepreneurs self publish e-books. You can set up a website and provide your e-book for download. You can charge customers to download your e-book. This type of self-publishing can be quite lucrative as you avoid the costs of production that offline hard copy books require. You will, however, have to maintain your website.

If you are tech savvy then consider self publishing an e-book. You can always self publish that e-book for offline use in the future. An e-book can help you test the waters to see if your book content is successful or needs tweaking.

For example, let’s say that you wish to write a manual for a software product. You can write an e-book and self publish it to sell on your website. You can track sales of the e-book as well as survey customer’s as to their satisfaction with the e-book. You can then revise the e-book and self publish it for offline use. The initial e-book you created was a “test” book that most likely saved you money in the long run.