Writing and Publishing an e-Book

Now that you know what makes a book an e-book from part 1, the final step is taking your correctly formatted book and publishing it. And in case you’re wondering what’s the catch, we cover some of the pros and cons of e-book publishing.

Publishing an e-Book

There are two basic ways to get an e-book published—as part of a package with traditional publishers or on your own through vanity or self-publishing. In our post “Alternatives to Lulu,” we cover several different nontraditional publishers and what they present as their industry niches. These publishers offer a wide variety of services and packages, at a wide variety of pricing, to help you publish your e-book when, where, and how you want. You get to choose to be a micromanager at all steps or to be easy breezy and let them do all the work. Whichever route you choose, you’ll end up with a published e-book ready to be distributed!

The Advantages (and Disadvantages) of Publishing an e-Book

We like to think of publishing an e-book as an author’s “foot in the door” to the publishing world. It has much lower production costs, a faster time to distribution, and zero delivery costs. It’s easily accessible worldwide and can incorporate multimedia—something that is consistently becoming more valuable. Also, e-books are generally very user friendly and are much easier to search than print books.

There are some disadvantages, however. Briefly mentioned in part 1, different e-book readers use different formats, and they typically do not cross over. This means your audience is limited to those who own readers that understand your e-book’s format (or funding the e-book’s availability in multiple formats). Plagiarism of your e-book is easier, and stricter security will cost. Finally, with the growing popularity of e-books, you will have a lot of competition; without the right blend of marketing and distribution, your e-book may not do very well, no matter how thrilling it is.

Deciding how to share your work with others can be complicated, time consuming, and money draining. But with your access to e-books and self-publishing, sharing it certainly does not need to be hard.