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Have you ever wanted to write a book? Better yet, have you written a book? Either way, if the urge to see your work in print overtakes you, what’s a wannabe author to do? There are a couple of options. The first is to approach the massive publishing houses with the help of the literary agent you may not have. The second is to self-publish. There are pros and cons to both.

Today I want to talk about my experience with self publishing.

I never thought I would want to publish my novel. I wrote it because I wanted to see if I could. It was the most fun I’ve ever had. When I was done (it took over three years) I had a big stack of pages buried in my computer. I was surprised at how badly I wanted to hold the book I had written, but I wasn’t really interested in approaching the publishing houses.

I wound up using Amazon’s service Createspace to publish my book. Publishing with Createspace was a good choice for me. It was easy, fast, and the price was right (it’s hard to beat print on demand!). The process of uploading your manuscript is so easy that I would like to spend the rest of this article talking about the one thing every would-be self-publisher should keep in mind: editing.

If you self-publish, you are most likely your own editor. This means you have to clean up your own mistakes. Fix your own grammatical errors. Being your own objective extra pair of eyes can be difficult. After spending so long with your manuscript, you may find yourself more than a little attached to it. I certainly was. But I spent three drafts re-writing my book, largely so I could spot the errors.

After you upload your files, your book will be published as is. If you have errors in the text, those errors will be in the finished product. It is worth taking a little extra time to make sure that you are happy with the book you are about to submit.

If you take the time, you will have a product and an achievement that nobody can ever take away from you. It’s the best feeling in the world.

Everybody loves a good suspense novel. If you are a writer looking for a genre that is likely to get your book published, you should probably think about writing suspense fiction books.

If you think that suspense books are all detective and international espionage books, then you should think again. You can write a suspense thriller about any topic under the sun. In fact, the best ones are usually about ordinary individuals who get caught up in a sequence of events they cannot escape from.

We do not even need to mention the title or author of the best selling suspense novel of the decade. Just a couple of details about the plot suffice to give the title and author away. This book was about a 2000 year old conspiracy that involved factual information that had been hidden from the public in the interests of the church. The story revolved around an academic who discovered that Jesus was in fact married. Have you guessed the title yet?

Or look at the books written by a woman who is seriously interested in reincarnation and after death experiences. These are normally considered subjects that only a narrow readership would be interested in, but her books are consistent bestsellers. That is because she writes suspense books about characters the average reader can relate to and she creates edge of the seat plots.

One more example is the famous novel that was written about the chemical composition of perfume, of all things. The subject became fascinating for readers because it gave them information about the main character in the book and was an integral part of the plot. It was an intensely suspenseful novel that was set in medieval Europe.

All of these books were extremely popular, but not one of them was about espionage or a private detective. They were about people like you and me. What are you most interested in? What is your occupation? Anything will do. For example, a plumber could write a fantastic novel about a plumber who listened in on a conversation while he was fixing a leaky pipe in somebody’s house. Wanting to know more, he fixed the plumbing in such a way that it would break somewhere down the line later and the owner would call him in again.

There are a couple of essential ingredients to any successful novel. The main character must be fleshed out so that the reader can get to know and understand him or her. The secondary character, the one who is opposed to the main character, must also be well developed. Also, the suspense must build from the first page to the last. Instead of writing a how to manual, why not write a suspense thriller instead. If nothing else, you will enjoy writing it more!

Want to find out more about suspense fiction books, then visit Jack Hanley’s site on how to choose the best books for your needs.

It’s amazing. I’ve been writing books for years, and selling them online for nearly 15 years, and previously only in print through selling foreign licenses, or printing them myself, advertising them, and selling them either online or in classes I taught.

Now there is a better way. If you have something you want to say, you can put it in print, or sell it online and there is no difficult about doing that. If you don’t know where to start, there are writing coaches that can give you a hand by discussing topics, subjects, and what you are passionate about.

Now you can tell a provider of services what you want to say, and they’ll write it for you. There is a little company we know of that does that for English writers, www.lifeimprovementbooks.com. And another for Spanish writers, www.ipublicidades.com . And they have done work for several authors around the world for several years. They have a team of writers in English, Spanish, and French that can help you tell your story. Many companies exist to help beginning authors, and the ones that help that most are the ones who ‘draw out’ what you want to tell your readers easily.

If you’ve already created a draft of your book, you are more than 50% there. The next step involves editing, proofreading, refining, and creating a proper layout for book printing or putting it online or on Kindle.

With these professional services type of company, the layout of your own book is relatively inexpensive, takes only a few days, and can be delivered ready to print to the printer of your choice. Don’t know which printer to use? Or, only need a few copies, or just one copy of a special book for a friend – not a problem. Don’t know what size to print. Here’s a general rule of thumb: Workbooks for workshops, A4 or 8.5″ x 11″, Executive paperback of technical value 7″ x 10″, Highest Quality Paperback for Self-Help or Fiction 6″x9″, Mass market paperback 5.5″ x 8.5″ or smaller. And yes, you can get just ONE copy printed.

In today’s book publishing industry, if you need a private edition for your family tree and history for 10 members – not a problem. If you are going to teach a private class to 4 students and you need a 500 page manual – not a problem. If you want to sell one book at a time from your website, to a person interested in it in Timbuktu – not a problem.

And if you want your book on Amazon.com for sale – or Amazon Kindle books – also not a problem. The world is changing and the book printing and distribution industry as well. And if you just want one copy for the world to remember you by, just sign it and put it in your time capsule – not a problem.

From writing, to editing, proofing, translating, typesetting, printing books, distributing online, or through Amazon – the world has changed. And the author inside of your that may have been restricted by past technological restrictions has been, at last, set free to share his or her wisdom with the rest of the world, one copy at a time.

Do you have a story to tell? Tell your own story – without knowing how to type. Click here to get your own unique version of this article with free reprint rights.