Exploring Your Current Book Publishing Options
13th March 2023
In this article, we will look at what book publishing is, its types, options, your take, how it relates to your personality type, and finally, how important it is. If you are thinking of writing and publishing a book in our modern world, then this article is your best friend. You need to know what you need to know before you embark on this journey. Let’s get started without further protest.
What Is Book Publishing?
After you have written, edited, and designed your manuscript to the best it could be, it’s time to share it with the world of readers in any possible formats available to you. But what is this book publishing thing anyway? Most people confuse book publishing with book distribution, but I want to let you know today that these are two sides of the same coin. They all relate, but they are different and distinct. A book must be published before it’s distributed in any format.
Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software, and other content available to the public for sale or for free.[1] Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newspapers, and magazines. With the advent of digital information systems, the scope has expanded to include digital publishing such as ebooks, digital magazines, websites, social media and video game publishing.
Publishing – Wikipedia
Therefore, book publishing refers to the process of making it ready for public consumption, and that involves a lot of things: writing, editing, designing, and formatting. This means a book can be published before it’s available for sale. Do you now understand the logic?
For example, if a manuscript is written but not yet edited and formatted in the right way, it’s still a manuscript, not a book. But when it’s professionally edited, designed, and formatted into the final edition, it’s already published on that computer.
Related: Self-Publishing Ultimate Guide
The next step in publishing will be the distribution channels where you will need to either print or convert the file and then upload it to a system such as Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing. But even before you upload the book files it’s already a book even on your computer.
In most cases, a book cover file is designed as a separate file. The book interior file is then designed and formatted in a separate file. It can be either in a Microsoft Word format or in a PDF format. But it doesn’t matter what format it is in. As long as the manuscript is well-edited and all the elements have been added, it’s no longer manuscript, it’s a book.
Types of Book Publishing
There are only two main known book publishing types with many other types in between. These two types are traditional publishing and self-publishing. The former is called so because it is the natural way of doing it. The latter is called that way because it’s the modern way of publishing books, and it comes with many different golden benefits. However, all these book publishing types have their pros and cons.
Some self-published authors use other mediums such as hybrid publishers. This means they pay a certain amount of cash ahead of time, and this small publisher does the work for them. I can’t call that self-publishing because the word, “self” is key. If you do it all for me, then you are my publisher. I didn’t publish the book myself. You did.
In either type, all the publishing processes are involved. You write the manuscript and you do your self-edits to the best of your knowledge. Then a professional editor sees what you didn’t see and corrects it, mostly with your approval. When everything else is done including the cover and interior design, the book is then ready.
When the book is ready for public use, it’s published. You can then distribute it to the people of your choice in many different ways available to you. If you chose traditional publishing, then your publisher promotes markets and sells them for you. Then the publisher cuts the biggest chunk to pay for all those services and then it pays you a dime.
Yet, if you are crippled, just as 98% of authors are, you have no option but to go with the flow. However, remember that saying, “Only a dead fish goes with the flow,” because it’s so true when it comes to choosing a book publishing type that works for you. This also goes with your true personality type.
Book Publishing Options
You can choose to publish and then distribute your book in digital, print, or both. You can even distribute it in an audio file format. It matters what you chose. It’s all your choice to make. It matters what tools you have at hand, and what publishing type you have chosen for your book.
Thus, the publishing option is not the publishing type. It’s simply an option you chose to distribute your book to your readers. This can be done online and offline and on both platforms. Digital book formats are so many these days, and that means you have many options to choose from.
As we have seen earlier, remember that the actual book publishing happens before you chose a distribution channel or option. That’s why it matters if you want to distribute the book yourself or use a company to help you. It’s all your choice again. Traditional publishers are still the best option for many authors for many reasons.
But for people like this author, it’s shit. You might need to take time to do your research to see why I am saying this. However, it all depends on who we are talking to.
Book Publishing and You
Now, what’s your take? Do you think it’s a good idea to publish your own book? Do you think it’s always wiser to choose a well-known book publisher in town? It’s all your choice. It’s all your decision. You are very free to make such a decision. No one and no book or article will force you to make a choice.
Philosophy is the backbone of every decision you and I make in this world. This is why I want to know your thoughts on any topic. This is because you already have a position even before reading my points. You already have a belief. You already have an opinion on any given topic.
So, what do you think?
I believe anyone can publish a book. Why do I believe so? I believe so because it’s not the building, nor an institution that publishes books. Rather, it’s individuals doing their own parts in the whole process. If this is true, and it is true, do you think you can’t do all that and still win?
It all depends on your personality type. I think the way I think because I am who I am. I am an Intuitive Introverted Empath, and those are a lot of difficult words in one person, aren’t they? Take it easy. Being intuitive means knowing things before you’re told.
Hey, how do I know how to refill that Epson printer when I just saw the machine for the first time now? How do I go about publishing my book when I have never seen anyone doing it in my presence before? How can I even start designing my book cover?
All those questions are very important, but the answer lies in my personality type. That says it all. You can’t force it.
Being an introvert means you can’t say what you know even when you know that what you know is true. You just feel shy and afraid to talk about it publicly. You love doing your own business. You enjoy working in solitude. That’s me. But that comes with its own beautiful problems to deal with, alone.
Being an empath means feeling other people’s emotions and acting them out. No, there’s something more; you can also act in the opposite way whenever you detect someone’s thoughts and feelings before they verbalized them.
Book Publishing and Personality Types
Just as we have seen above, our personality type matters in every area of our lives. When it comes to the book publishing steps, your personality type matters the most. This is because this determines which publishing type you’re likely to choose. It also determines how you will distribute your book(s) to your potential readers.
That’s how powerful it is. Your personality is your identity, and your identity is your life. It determines even your best life career. This is because the best career is your vocation. Even book writing and publishing is one of the best careers ever known to humanity.
Whether you have chosen self-publishing or traditional publishing or something in between, it was because of your personality type. However, people around you can influence your choices. Situations can influence your choices. But whenever you find yourself there, you will always be alone. You will then, like the Prodigal Son, come to your senses.
Again, self-publishing doesn’t always mean doing everything alone. You can still be a self-published author but use other people’s knowledge and resources. This means you can hire a professional book interior designer, a cover designer, and an editor. However, self-publishing is more than making your manuscript into a book.
Self-publishing is a business, and you have to look at it from that angle. You need resources for it. You need a business plan. You need to execute that plan in your own way without pulling out some hair on your head. You need to be yourself. You don’t need to be me and start doing things my way. That won’t work for long.
The Importance of Book Publishing
No product is important if nobody knows it exists. Do you remember your book is your best product ever? You might be a businessman or businesswoman, and you have a lot of good products for sale. But if you write a book about anything, that’ll be the best product of all. It’s your child. It’s your words.
That’s how important book publishing is. Remember also now that book publishing happens before it’s printed, recorded, acted, or uploaded into an online platform for sale. It became a product as soon as every element is inserted. These elements include the metadata and the cover design.
When your manuscript is turned into a book file, it’s already published. Putting all the elements in it is important. Those elements make it a book, not a manuscript anymore, and that’s what counts. Book distribution is secondary to its publication. Get it published first before you distribute it to the public.
Summary
Ah, we have learned a lot, especially if you started with me from the very first word up to this point in the article. But that’s only an assumption on my end, isn’t it? I’m an empath to the point of reading the minds of my online readers, but I can’t guess a few things.
I want to know how you feel after reading this article. Have you learned anything new? What is it that you have just learned? What is it that you already knew long before reading this article? Would you like to talk to me about your opinion? You can simply start a chat now and I will get to you as soon as possible. I read all the comments for now.
In this article, we have discussed book publishing, its types, options to choose from, your thoughts about it, how it works in line with your personality type, and finally, how important it is to turn your manuscript into a final book file, a product you can be proud about. I hope that helps you make a well-informed decision afterward.
Thanks for reading!
Hashtags: #digitalmarketing #lifecoaching #selfpublishing #technology
Further Readings
- Publishing—wikipedia.org
- What Is Book Publishing?—kanyinbooks.com
- Book Publishing Process: What Is It?—books.forbes.com
