Publish your own book

The internet means that everyone can publish whatever they want, just by creating a web page.

But for many people, online publishing is still seen as second best to a real printed book.

A book has a quality that websites will never possess; it can be gift wrapped and presented to someone.

You can treasure it, giving it pride of place on your bookshelf, or just keep it beside the bed to read whenever you want.

Or ­ if you’re really lucky ­ you can sell a few copies and raise a bit of money.

And thanks to some clever modern technology, it’s a lot easier now than ever before to have a book published.

So, whether it’s the history of your village, a memoir for a grandparent or your very own cookery book, why not consider putting your words on the page, self-publishing it and seeing your work in a professionally bound book?

Before we start, let’s tackle the notion of ‘vanity publishing’, ­ hardly a flattering term and not a very useful one as far as we’re concerned.

The term arose in Victorian times to describe works published at the author’s own expense, but implied that the book was of poor quality and could not find a publisher. While some self-published books undoubtedly fit that definition, others certainly don’t; Lewis Carroll, for example, paid the publishing costs of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland himself.

There’s little difference between vanity publishing and self-publishing in practical terms ­ both essentially mean you’re paying someone to produce your book for you, as opposed to the way that, say, JK Rowling writes a Harry Potter book and is paid by a publisher, which takes a gamble that enough people will want to buy it. The publisher prints thousands of copies, distributes them to bookshops, and if enough copies are sold, the author gets extra money on top of any advance they were paid.

But for a lot of people that’s not a realistic option ­ it’s very hard to hav e a book accepted by a publisher and, if you just want to write a history of your family, or a guide to a very obscure topic, there might not be enough people around who want to buy it.

Self-publishing steps into that gap; it’s where you pay the publisher a fee to cover its upfront costs and the production of the book. And because you’re paying, it will publish just about anything ­ some companies in this field claim they’re a bit more discriminating and only accept ‘good-quality’ material, referring to themselves as ‘self-publishing’ companies, rather than ‘vanity presses,’ but there’s really little difference.

Self-publishing is now easier than ever because of a combination of the internet and a printing technology called print on demand (POD), which relies on digital printing presses that can be programmed to produce just one copy of a single book, and automated machines that will bind it in the appropriate cover.

It means that publishers don’t have to produce thousands of copies of a book to make money (unlike traditional publishing). It also means that if you want to publish something yourself, it doesn’t have to be printed until someone wants a copy ­ you won’t be asked to pay for, say, 500 copies of a book that’s only relevant to your immediate family.

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