Self-Publish for Free
Clay Shannon
Most authors want their work to be read. Compare that desire, though,
with the fact that the majority of authors know--often from bitter
experience and disappointment--that it is extremely difficult to get
published the 'traditional' way. Even many books which eventually not only
got published but became best-sellers were rejected dozens of times before a
more prescient agent or publisher “saw the light” and gave the book a chance
in the marketplace. Just two examples of such instances are Margaret
Mitchell's “Gone With the Wind” (which has sold upwards of 28 million
copies, and still sells hundreds of thousands of copies annually) and John
Kennedy O'Toole's “A Confederacy of Dunces,” which was published
posthumously and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1981.
But, as the saying goes, there is more than one way to skin a cat.
Besides those relentless authors (or their mothers, as in O'Toole's case)
who kept pushing and prodding and querying until they finally got the answer
they felt their book deserved, other popular writers eschewed traditional
publishers altogether. No lesser a literary light than Samuel Clemens (AKA
Mark Twain) self-published much of his work, calculating that he could more
than recoup his investment by means of advance placement of orders secured
by agents who traveled the country, taking orders for “The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn” and other of his works.
It is no different today. Many authors choose to self-publish, either
solely out of preference for that publishing model or due to a sustained
dearth of interest on the part of traditional publishers to “take a gamble”
on their work.
Depending on the package and add-ons you choose, you can self-publish for
as little as a few hundred dollars. And, instead of the several months or
even years that the traditional publishing route takes to bring a book to
market, by self-publishing you can have a copy of your book in hand within a
matter of months, or even weeks (after you've finished writing it, of
course).
Yet, there is a way to disseminate your work to the masses that is even
less expensive, and even faster, than self-publishing. Provided you have an
Internet connection, you can publish electronic versions (computer files) of
your works absolutely free.
As we all know, we live in an electronic age. As-yet undiscovered authors
can take advantage of the nearly ubiquitous connectivity of their desired
audience to bring their writings to the masses. I have personally done so
with both a two-volume social/cultural/family history of the United States
and a collection of three novels and a novella—at no out-of-pocket expense.
To get an idea of what you can make available to the public, download my
“4 Novels” application here:
http://www.winsite.com/bin/Info?12500000036639
and/or my two volume historical work here:
http://www.winsite.com/bin/Info?22000000036712
To indicate how much interest in your work you may generate by making
your manuscripts available online, at time of writing my history tome has
been downloaded approximately a thousand times, and the four novels
considerably upwards of that number.
Now that the “why” you would “ePublish” (electronically publish) has been
considered, let us now examine just how you can do so: Using a freeware
computer program I have created, you can create a software application of
your own that allows people to read your electronic manuscripts. By
supplying the names of up to six document files and inputting the data you
want the program to display, it is a quick and easy process to customize
your own application and upload it to the Internet. Once you make known the
availability of your work, it can be read by—who knows who? Perhaps an agent
or a publisher who will take an interest in it, or just “plain folks” who
will enjoy your prose or benefit from your message.
Note: The manuscripts I have made available in the two applications
mentioned above happen to be in Adobe Acrobat/.PDF format. You can use
whatever format you want, however: Microsoft Word (.DOC) files, generic Rich
Text documents (.RTF), Open Office Writer (.ODT) files, or anything else.
The advantages I find in .PDF files is that almost everybody has the program
needed to read these files (Adobe Acrobat Reader), and if they don't, it is
available as a free download. Additionally, .PDF files are read-only (they
cannot be modified by the reader). Most people have Microsoft Word
installed, too, and can read your .DOC files, but those that don't will not
be able to open that type of document. If you opt for Acrobat/.PDF files,
you can generate them using the free OpenOffice Writer word processing
program (OpenOffice can be downloaded from http://download.openoffice.org/2.0.0/).
Even if your manuscript was not written in Writer, OpenOffice can convert
all common file formats (such as Microsoft Word/.DOC files) into .ODT files
and from there into Acrobat/.PDF files.
Click this link for instructions on how to use
ePublish.
A manual in PDF format will launch on your desktop.
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