What Is Self Publishing?

A self publisher, is an author who gets a business license, buys the ISBN #s, hires a printing press (print shop/printer) to print the books, than sells the books themselves. The author keeps 100% of the profits, because no one pays royalties; you keep 100% of the copyright. You market the book and distribute the book yourself through local bookstores, a personal Website, your blog, and on online bookstores such as Amazon.com.

Self-Publishing gets it's name from the fact that the author does everything themselves.

The author gets their book printed up in two common ways:

1) They hire a local or online print shop to print up the book all at once. Most printers require a 5,000-copy minimum, with cash up front, though it is common, for printers to require a minimum of 20,000 copies. Printing up your books in this manner, unfortunately requires the author to have a very large sum of money all at once. If you choose this method, be sure you have taken into account the cost of printing the book, which for most writers is rarely under $30,000 and often more than $200,000, and this money has to be paid to the printer BEFORE they will print up your book.

2.) The other method is to hire a print-on-demand printer. These may or may-not ask for money up front, depending on how they run their business. To find out more about print-on-demand, simply scroll down to the POD section of this article.

It should be noted, that regardless of the method you use to have your book printed, you are the publisher. The company that printed your book up, is just a printer and only a printer, never are they considered the publisher.