I wanted a book I could sell through my web site (http://www.bpic.co.uk) to help manufacturing companies with planning and control and also give away on our training courses. Self publishing is not difficult PROVIDED you know what you are doing. From my experience here are the 8 steps to publishing your own book.
Step 1 - Write the book - this, believe it or not, is the easy bit, most people have a book in them when they get round to it. n.b. I am sure e-publishing will not replace books in my lifetime. Books are the most commonly bought item on the internet, what does that tell you?
Step 2 -Think of a really good title - I called mine "Business Excellence" but I am sure a title like "Sacred Cows make the best Hamburgers" or "Quality is Free" would have sold better.
Step 3 - Get an ISBN number from your country's Standard Book Numbering Agency (e.g. Whitaker, 12, Dyott Street London in the UK) - you cannot get far without this and it costs nothing.
Step 4 - Get a good cover designed by a professional. Nearly half of my printing cost was the cover but it was worth it. The cover design and printing was the slowest part so start early.
Step 5a - Look for a publisher - this should be the easiest way but no publishers were interested in my book unless I could pretty much guarantee sales in which case they would charge about £35 per book and give me a 10% royalty on sales including any I bought and/or sold myself. I discovered that in the UK only about 0.5% of books written ever get published, 5% of the books in print account for 50% of the sales, it takes on average 2 years to get a book from agreement to the bookshelf, promotion for a new author is only about £200 and selling 2,000 copies is seen as a big achievement! Pretty depressing stuff for someone who has devoted every free moment for a year to writing his or her masterpiece.
Step 5b - Give up on publishers, do it yourself - get quotes from 2 or 3 local book printers for 2,000 copies in paperback form. Don't worry about selling them all. I decided to sell my 250 page book for £14.90 and broke even when I sold about 300 (i.e. £4,500).
Step 6 - Get your partner, friends and anyone else you know to proof read the book. However many times you proof-read some mistakes will still slip through!
Step 7 - Print the book in camera ready copy to be sure you know what will be printed, using a laser printer (600 dpi minimum), on high quality printing paper (e.g. Mellotex) which the printer should be able to provide. Camera ready copy has the advantage over supplying material on a disc that you can see and correct mistakes with illustrations or layout before printing. Most printers will print exactly what they receive (if you are lucky), they will not correct obvious mistakes or lay out the page, so you must give them exactly what you want printed including a diagram showing where you want the print on the page. Print on A4 or quarto in the aspect ratio you want and they will reduce the print to fit onto the page size you specify. Look at your favourite books for size and layout ideas.
Step 8 - Promote the book on your web site, this is the fun bit. I have listed my book along with other relevant books and have direct links to Amazon.co.uk (see www.bpic.co.uk/books.htm). Print reviews, endorsements and extracts, 3 of each if possible on a detail page, have a look at www.bpic.co.uk/be_book.htm which sells about 80 of this technical book p.a. through the web from about 1,500 page views p.a..
Conclusion - Self publishing is not difficult if you follow the 8 steps above but do not expect to make your fame or fortune writing a book. Having a web site helps to sell but few authors break even so publish for fun, prestige or, like me, as an additional source of business leads. The old saying goes that to make a small fortune as an author you need to start with a large fortune!