Memoirs of the Self-Published: Part II - Questions to ask before you begin

Before you embark on your self-publishing project, you need to determine what are your aims for self publishing? Are you doing it to make money? To document family or local history? To create art for art's sake? To get a story out there that only you can tell? (I said yes to the last 2 questions with my book.)

What's key before you begin your project is to clearly define the scope of your book, and how you will evaluate whether or not your book is a success or failure. I defined success for my project as just getting the book out there (as a paperback for sale on Amazon and local bookstores, and an ebook for sale on the Google eBookstore). I didn't have financial gain as one of my goals, but to sell enough copies to break even in the first year of sales.

Estimate how much time you think it will take to write. I had already written most of the stories for my book as an undergrad. Do you have experienced friends who can help you with editing, layout, and design? Can you teach yourself what you need to know, or do you need to pay a contractor, printer, designer, or art school student to do it for you?

If your aim is to make a lot of money from publishing, you can stop reading this blog series now. There are plenty of publishing for money resources out there. You only need to Google "Make money self-publishing" or search for similar terms to bring up a wealth of books and conferences for people willing to take your money to tell you how to do this.

Technically, all you need to do to publish a book in the United States is to purchase an ISBN from Bowker (you can only purchase them in sets of 10 for $275.00), get a Library of Congress Control Number, and bundle a number of pages under a title or create an ebook.

This series on self-publishing is about how I went about making my book of short stories and why I made certain design, printing, and binding decisions, in hope of inspiring others.

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