Self Publishing

One of the authors who enlightened us about her self-publishing experience is Roswitha Dessureault, an incredible woman who became known to me about seven years ago as owner of the Tea Cozy Restaurant in Winnipeg. Roswitha sold her restaurant and retired, but soon began writing her autobiography and has happily self published it. Read more about her and buy it at:

Here is some of the advice I garnered from that panel as well as from some other well-respected self-publishing authors:

1) You may choose to self-publish, but you still need to hire the services of an independent, objective, professional editor to edit your book.

2) Find a “model book” that you want your book to look like and pattern if after that.

3) Use your “circle of influence” to help market your book.

4) A self-publishing author must be an endless and relentless self-promoter. If this does not fit your personality type, you are probably best off going with a traditional publisher.

5) PubMatch.org is a terrific site for self-publishing authors that helps them market their books on a global platform: http://www.pubmatch.org/

6) Look to this website to purchase a guide on self-publish: http://www.selfpublishing.ca

7) There are publishers looking to republish previously self-published books. So if you have self-published your book and find you do not enjoy the marketing, promotion and business side of the publishing industry, you can likely get a publisher to partner with you. Try and negotiate the right to keep self-publishing the manuscript as one of the authors on the panel had done just that. Sounds like the best of both worlds!

8) Dave Hunter, another very successful self-published author, reminds authors to become friendly with bookstores and their staffs as they are your agents to success. Dave’s book “Along Interstate-75” is a US bestseller. To see how it’s done, visit his user-friendly website at: http://www.i75online.com.

There are many factors involved when considering whether you should self-publish your book, partner with a publisher who might agree to enable you to self-publish cooperatively whilst they traditionally publish the book, or to go the traditional route and find a publisher who will look after the bulk of the marketing, promotion and distribution for you.