Some Thoughts on Publishing

Publishing should never be your main goal when writing anything. Focusing on getting published means that your narrative will never get written. It brings that inner critic to the foreground and he or she will harass the heck out of you!

When you are finished writing however, you may begin thinking about publishing your Memoirs. There are many places to do this. Unless you are famous or have an advanced degree in writing, you can pretty much forget about getting picked up by Random House. 99.9% of the average Memoir writers are going to have to self-publish. Very rarely – but it does happen – a book will be so successful that a major house will take notice and pick it up.

Self-Publication

There are many, many places out there offering help with self-publication. You can pay for the printing and these places will list your book on their website and market it for you. In my experience though, the marketing they do is extremely limited. You should be prepared to do the bulk of the marketing on your own.

Lulu, Inc.

The best venue that I have found is: Lulu, Inc. www.lulu.com. You can upload your book in MS Word format and in a matter of minutes, Lulu will transform your manuscript into a PDF file and make it available for sale on their website. They receive a very small commission. You set the price of your book to whatever you want. I set my 6x9, 80 pg. Manuscript at $14.88. The book costs $6.13 for Lulu to print and they receive a $1.75 commission. I make $7.00 on each sale. If you want to make money on the book, set the price higher. You can also make your book available for immediate download (in PDF form). You generally will set the book at a much lower cost for this. Again, you set your royalty and Lulu takes a small commission. The only downside is laying out the manuscript yourself in MS Word (or Quark, Pagemaker, etc.). If you need help doing this, contact me at info@double-roads.com.