Traditional Publisher versus Self-Publishing for Business Books

When you look at the options for publishing a business book for self-promotion or business promotion, there are actually three options. Traditional publishers, self-publishing or creating an e-book.

Creating an e-book

E-books are great because they can be created with any pdf-creating software, you have complete control over the process, and it costs you virtually nothing. And you can give away mini-ebooks or sell ebooks right on your website. You can also sell ebooks on Amazon.

Of course, the bad part is, you can’t hand someone an ebook on a sales call or sell it at the back of the room at a seminar. (You can try selling it at a seminar but it’s hard to get people to buy an ebook that way.)

Using a traditional publisher

The trditional publisher route can be very slow and very difficult. Unless you have a business connection or personal connection with a traditional book publisher, it’s almost impossible to get your manuscript in front of them.

Your best bet is to find a book representative to shop your book around. Of course, they will only take your book if they feel it’s good enough and they represent business books.

Self-publishing is your best bet if you just want a book for promotion

The other option is self-publishing. This can also be a mine field but if you do it right, it works well for self or business promotion books. There are a whole bunch of online publishing firms out there ranging from you-do-it-all and they just print it to they hand-hold you through the whole process.

For my first book, I chose to use a pretty good hand-holder. They set me up with a word file that would automatically format my book for the size paperback I wanted. They had an artist who would design my cover, they supplied me with an ISBN number, and they would get my book listed with the major book sellers.

The problems with print on demand

Now, here’s the pitfalls. This was a print-on-demand publisher. Book stores won’t carry POD books on their shelves because they can’t return the unsold copies. People have to special order the book. (I’m beginning to hear that a few POD publishers are starting to take books back so do your research).

Your POD publisher will not promote the book any further than to list it on their website. Promotion is entirely up to you. Of course, with a traditional publisher, if they decide to publish your book, unless you have a name like Mackay or Trump, they won’t spend a single dollar promoting your book either.

Do your own research

I recommend you do some research. Type print on demand into Google or Yahoo and see what comes up. There are also websites that have done a lot of the research for you. And there are extensive listing sites of POD publishers.

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