I am almost done with my book, I just have to add the finishing touches. I am planning on editing my book for about a month or two,if I think about finding an agent. If not, I want to take the self-publishing process into consideration. And before I decided I want to find out more information regarding it since this is my first book. So my first question is how much promoting comes with self-publishing? Thanks and I appreciate your advice.

All Answers To Questions

if you never published before, I would get an agent to be safe. Your books need to be edited and reviewed by a professional if you want to make good money.

As much as it takes to break even, then make money so you can keep doing it. It will be a full time job by itself.

Self-publishing is the worst idea if you want to be taken seriously as a writer. Self-publishing is also known as going through a "vanity publisher"--that is not something that looks favorably on you, unless you are trying to do complete self-publishing where you take on the entire cost of publishing yourself. This can be more cost-effective than vanity publishing, but nothing can really beat being accepted by an agent and selling your book to a publishing house.

self-publishing is very difficult you must do all the promoting like trying to get book stores to accept it listing it on ebay and amazon get the news out and everything btw will u answer my question and thxs! ~~~Scooby-Doo~~~

Have you ever heard of a self published book that made the New York Times Best Seller List, or any best seller list for that matter? If you want to become a successful writer in terms of income and recognition, self publishing is not going to help you accomplish that goal. However, if you don't care about money and writing is just a hobby, self publish, you have nothing to lose.

Promoting is incredibly important no matter how good the content is. The publisher generally does most of this promoting. If you self-publish this means you. Many self-publishers believe that if a book is listed on a self publishers store front it will enjoy good sales if it's a good book. Not so. Even a good book listed on Amazon will not sell if nobody knows about it. You need to drive people there. What this takes depends on your expectations, the nature of the book and it's market. If your book is an historical account of your town, your only promotion might be convincing a few local retailers to carry it and doing a few signings with them. If on the other hand your book is fiction or anything else with a broad audience, promoting it adequately becomes very difficult. A few fiction authors have been successful choosing to self publish, but it's really rare. This is the very reason, most successful self publishers are those writing to niche audiences who define success as reaching that audience, not by becoming a best selling author. If this is you and you know how to do layout, editing, and have the appropriate software to do it as well as the ability to market your book, self publishing might be for you. Otherwise traditional publishing is the way to go.