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A New Twist on Self-Publishing

By Jo Ann LeQuang

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 30Dec2008 Word count: 575 Viewed: 146 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

Years ago, self-publishing was nicknamed the "vanity press," and writers who produced their own products were looked upon as being inferior scribes with bloated egos who could not break into print any other way.

Today we know that artists of other types (musicians, filmmakers) produce their own work. Why not writers?

Self-publishing has come out of the closet recently, particularly with digital and other print-on-demand services that make publishing a book affordable for most budgets.

There's another twist on producing your own material. Writers today can publish their own works electronically. This allows them to write and publish their own products at low expense.

Now that also exposes the average writer to the vagaries and indignities of the publishing side of the writing business. Writers can publish their work, but unless the works find an audience, no one will read them. This means writers have to spread their wings a little to embrace marketing and distribution, as well as wordsmithing.

For writers willing to become entrepreneurs, this is great news, but it comes at a bit of a price. First, it forces writers today to think differently than writers of bygone eras.

A writer must decide what work he or she wants to produce, for whom, and for what purpose.

Some writers want to share their viewpoint or to start to build a following. If that describes you and you don't care about the money side of the business (yet), then a blog is a great way to start.

Blogs allow you to write a lot, possibly find an audience, perfect your message and craft, and possibly set the stage for a future book or product. Bloggers can even make money online, but it's a kind of income trickle at first for the nouveau-blogger. However, major blogs can provide a generous full-time income. Major blogs take quite a while to build. So the advantages of blogging for the aspiring writer are numerous.

An even bigger field for writers-turned-publishers involves writing an information product and then selling that product online. Electronic production means the product can be produced economically.

Information can be anything that people are willing to pay for—recipes, how-to texts, courses, essays, devotionals, and histories. Not so long ago, all of this was published the traditional way of ink-on-paper. It was expensive for publishers and only top writers or information-providers got to play. Today, any writer can construct a course or product based on his or her own expertise—and produce and sell it online.

Writers have a huge advantage in this market because they write so easily and well. A writer can research, study, or work with experts to develop a product even outside his or her own narrow field of expertise. The products are then sold online as downloadable items. For writers who don't care about the money, it can be free. For writers who are interested in publishing their own work as a business, it can be through services like ClickBank which helps writer/publishers market their online work.

Of course, publishing is a very demanding field and a writer has to learn a bit about the Internet and information publishing. But for those willing to learn and pay some dues, there is a real potential for huge rewards. In fact, this may be one of the most exciting times ever to be a writer!

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