Has anyone ever self-published a book rather than going through a company who accepted it for publishing? If yes can you tell me what the advantages and disadvantages of going this route may be? Thank you in advance. Cherie

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my friend did and she seemed to be pretty happy with it, she said that she had a hard time selling it sometimes, but the profits were all hers after she paid the cost

first finish the book before printing consult the chief librarian

When you self-publish, you have complete artistic control. With a traditional publisher, they choose the cover art (and generally the title). With self-publishing, your book comes out exactly the way you want it to. However, self-publishers cannot get your book into traditional bookstores. Almost no reviewers will touch them. No one will copyedit it for you, so you will have to pay for that service. If you decide to try and publish traditionally down the line, it is not considered a publishing credential. Here is another article, from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, about vanity presses: http://www.sfwa.org/beware/vanitypublishers.html For me, there are a few valid uses for vanity presses. The first is for things you only want for your friends and family-- for instance, if you are putting together a family recipe book. The second is for non-fiction that you have a platform to sell on. If you give talks on a specific topic and can sell books about it afterwards, this could be a reason to self publish. Poetry collections also spring to mind as something appropriate to self-publish, just because they are so impossible to find a publisher for! I would not suggest that anyone make this their first choice. If you are going to go with a self-publisher, I almost always recommend Lulu. They do not promise to be anything more than what they are, and I have always been pleased with products I have purchased from them. You can also purchase a distribution package which includes an ISBN, which means that your book can be listed on the online booksellers: http://www.lulu.com

As a former bookstore manager I can tell you that it is extremely difficult to purchase self-published and print-on-demand books for sale in a bookstore. We wanted to purchase a large quantity for a local author's book-signing, but the purchase had to go through the warehouse as per company policy, there was no ISBN and the warehouse couldn't purchase them for us without one. It was too large a purchase for the author to pay for them to be printed and sell them to us and it was a total pain in the neck. I would only do this as a last resort.