Self-Publishing

"The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation."

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Self-publishing is the publishing of books or other media (web content, articles, tutorials, for examples) by those who have written them.

In the traditional model, the publisher maintains a degree of editorial control over the content, and ordinarily makes choices about the design of the book-the layout of the text, the appearance of the cover, the bookbinding, the quality of the paper, and so on.

Then, the publisher pays a printer for the initial press run, usually at least several thousand copies.

The books are warehoused, again at the publisher's expense, and made available to distributors who in turn sell them to retailers.

The publisher may promote the books through a catalog, distribution of free advance copies to reviewers, and other means.

The self-publishing model involves fewer entities. Perhaps most often, there are two-the author, and the printer.

The author pays for the initial press run, which is often small, and stores the books, perhaps in a home or studio.

In many cases the author sells the book directly to readers and other end customers, or may perhaps sell it to or offer it on consignment through retail stores.

Less often, the author prints the books themself, usually using a xerographic process or a computer printer. In some cases, books are printed on demand with no inventory kept.

The distinctive features of self-publishing are:

* The author is also the publisher.
* The author finances the publication out of his/her own pocket.
* The author assumes responsibility for marketing.

A website, Web site or WWW site (often shortened to just site) is a collection of webpages, that is, HTML/XHTML documents accessible via HTTP on the Internet; all publicly accessible websites in existence comprise the World Wide Web.

The pages of a website will be accessed from a common root URL, the homepage, and usually reside on the same physical server.

The URLs of the pages organize them into a hierarchy, although the hyperlinks between them control how the reader perceives the overall structure and how the traffic flows between the different parts of the site.

The publisher usually controls the advertising and other marketing tasks, but may subcontract various aspects of the process described above.

In smaller companies, editing, proof-reading and layout might be done by freelancers.

Dedicated in-house sales forces for books are rapidly being replaced by specialised companies who handle sales to bookshops, wholesalers and chain stores for a fee.

This trend is accelerating as retail book chains and supermarkets have centralised their buying.

If the entire process up to the stage of printing is handled by an outside company or individuals, and then sold to the publishing company, it is known as book packaging.

This is a common strategy between smaller publishers in different territorial markets where the company that first buys the IP Rights, sells a package to other publishers and gains an immediate return on capital invested.

Indeed, the first publisher will often print sufficient copies for all territories and thereby obtain the maximum quantity discounts on the print run for all.

Resources: