Today there are more options than ever before for getting your book published. Here are four ways that you can get your book published:1. Commercial Book Publishing2. Self Publishing3. Subsidy Publishing4. eBook Publishing1. Commercial Book Publishing – This is the most well known way to get published and can also be the most challenging. While there are thousands of publishing houses, today there are more writers than ever before.Publishing houses are businesses and like all businesses their goal is to create profit as efficiently as possible. It is unlikely that you will be able to make contact with a publishing house if you don’t have a good literary agent.Surveys indicate that literary agents only accept 1 out of 400 writers for representation. The majority of literary agents prefer to take on clients that have previously been published.To get published with a publishing house will take a combination of talent, timing and luck. You can be an very talented writer and have a wonderful book but if the publishing house just finished publishing a book that is similar to yours you may not be accepted – or if this is a “red hot market” then you may be lucky.For these reasons it is important to do research and see what are the trends and what people are buying. An excellent resource for this type of information is Amazon’s Bestseller section.2. Self Publishing – Where in the past commercial publishing was the only option, today you can “self-publish” your book. Self publishing is when you find others who offer all of the services that you will need to create, print and distribute your book.Some of the services required are:*Editing – This is very important for most types of books*Proof Pages – Preparing the pages and page order*Artwork – You’ll need both Front and Back covers plus the internal artwork which is any images or clip-art that appears within the text*Printing – You will need to turn your electronic files into hard/soft cover books. There are 3 options for printing: get a small amount printed, get a large amount printed or use a print-on-demand service*Distribution – How will you distribute the books? You can contact retailers and online distributors yourself or utilize a professional serviceThe first step is to decide which tasks you will do and which tasks you will hire someone else to do. Thanks to the internet, there is a wealth of information online for you on each step of the process.3. Subsidy Publishing – In this case, the author pays a printing company to produce the book and then earns royalties from the sales of the book (usually a percentage). Sometimes this is confused with self publishing. With self publishing the author pays all the expenses and in turn receives 100% of the proceeds.Another name for this is “Vanity Publishing Houses” which sometimes can have bad reputations. They will often claim that they can sell the book and then after paying for everything the writer is left without any real distribution and stuck with a bunch of books.4. eBook Publishing – This is a relatively new phenomenon in the book publishing industry. It is very easy to take a digital file and turn it into and ebook to sell online. A good way to do this is by having a personal website or blog and putting up articles and content to attract visitors and get publicity.Alternatively, you can order an ISBN online and then companies like Amazon and Mobipocket will sell your ebook through their distribution network and you earn royalties from each sale.Thanks to the internet there has never been a better time for an author to get published. Some people feel that because there is so much information online that traditional books will become obsolete.I feel that while this may be true in some categories, for the most part it is the opposite – all of the free information creates a hunger for more!When radio first came out, the music industry was worried that they wouldn’t sell as much albums and then they started selling much more. It’s similar to how in a grocery store you are offered free samples, if it tastes good than you are more likely to buy.It’s a good idea to spend a lot of time doing research until you feel what is the best way for you to approach publishing your book. I highly recommend utilizing the internet to share with others and grow your readership.

This is another in my series of articles that explain the Online Publishing Model (OPM) and how small-time authors and/or self-publishers can use the OPM as a more lucrative alternative to the often archaic and dysfunctional traditional book publishing model. In short, using the OPM you’ll make more book sales and you’ll net more profits, faster.Typically, you will create your book/ebook in a source word processing program such as MS-Word or WordPerfect. Once you have converted it into PDF format you’ll be ready to start selling it via the three primary channels that make up the Online Publishing Model: 1. Sales-Mini-Sites, 2. Digital Download Distributors, 3. Print-On-Demand (POD) Distributors.This article explains the numerous benefits of using the Online Publishing model (OPM).Frankly, after my frustrating and disappointing experiences using the traditional book publishing model, I was truly blown away when I discovered the many benefits of the Online Publishing Model. I was thrilled to discover that there actually IS an alternative that will allow me to write and publish books and ebooks for a living.BENEFITS OF ONLINE PUBLISHING MODELAs I state on the Web site for the Instant Book Writing Kit, the benefits of the Online Publishing Model are numerous and compelling, Here are a dozen of them:You’ll Make More Money Instead of getting a paltry 3% to 35%, you’ll get somewhere between 60% and 90% of your cover price, depending on which of the three channels you’re using.You Can Charge More People are willing to pay more if they can get the information they are looking for almost immediately. Higher prices = more profits for you.You’ll Get Paid Sooner Many online payment processors will pay you within two weeks of making a sale. On the other hand, traditional publishers and distributors will make you wait 90 to 120 days for payment.Your Costs Will Be LowerWith the online publishing model your up-front costs will be significantly lower than if you self-publish the traditional way.You Won’t Have “Returns” You can choose to NOT accept “returns”. Unlike the traditional publishing model, all sales under the OPM will be final with minimal refunds. Returned “over-orders” will be a thing of the past.Your Sales Will Be On Automatic Pilot Once you have your Web site up and running and your files uploaded to the digital fulfillment and POD distributors, your ebooks/books will be selling automatically with little or no intervention by you.You’ll Be In Charge You’ll be in control of almost all aspects of the publishing and distribution of your book/ebook. You can publish or revise when you like. No more jumping to somebody else’s timetable.You’ll Have No Inventory You won’t have to keep track of an inventory and worry about shipping, storage, and damage hassles and costs. You’ll be completely inventory free.Order Fulfillment Will Be HistoryWith the OPM, your digital and POD distributors will handle the logistics and expense of shipping and handling for you. Any website downloads will be automatic.You Can Revise Whenever You LikeUsing online publishing channels you will have the freedom to make revisions to your books/ebooks whenever you like. You just update your book/ebook and post the new version at your convenience.You Can Add Special Features You can add value to your eBook by adding links to multi-media features and other hyper-linked bonuses.You’ll Have Direct Access To Your Data Dealing with online fulfillment houses and distributors you’ll have direct online access to current sales and earnings data.BOTTOM LINE ON OPMWhen I realized the full power of the online publishing model I truly was astounded! Discovering this new publishing model hit me like a breath of fresh air.After all, using the conventional book publishing model, I had spent more than two years banging my head against the wall in frustration — getting nowhere and going broke fast.That’s when I decided I had to find a better way. So I spent the following two years looking for a way to sidestep the traditional publishing model. It took literally thousands of hours and thousands of dollars, but in the end it was worth it because I did find a better way – the Online Publishing Model – the benefits of which are described above.Eventually I managed to write it all down in my Instant Book Writing Kit for the express purpose of sharing my Online Publishing Model with anyone who is interested in writing a book/ebook and wants to make some decent money publishing and marketing it online. By creating that book I wanted to make sure that other small-time authors and self publishers wouldn’t have to go through all of the trial-and-error aggravation and expense that I did. My goal was to create a turnkey, paint-by-number blueprint, that any aspiring author and/or self-publisher could easily duplicate and implement what I have done.So, if you are a small-time author and/or publisher you owe it to yourself to look into the Online Publishing Model before you write and/or publish that next book or ebook.Copyright © Shaun R. Fawcett. All rights reserved.