I keep shooting myself in the foot and then wonder why I’m hobbling around. A few weeks ago I realized I could still walk, kind of, so I got a much bigger gun and really made it so I won’t be able to walk.

Nice metaphor, huh?

What I’m talking about is the fact that for years I’ve been teaching people how easy it is to format their books themselves, even though I’ve got a business doing that. I’ve been slowly putting myself out of business by teaching people to do for themselves what they had been paying me to do for them.

Smart, huh?

Well, clearly that wasn’t enough. I was still getting clients and my old ones were coming back to me with the books they were writing. So now, just to make sure I go out of business (I really, really don’t want to, by the way. I love formatting. I love making other people’s books beautiful), I’ve written, and published a book on self-publishing with an emphasis on formatting. Now even more people will have the opportunity not to hire me! Yay!

So why have I done this? Well, because I’ve been promising people I would for a while now. I actually owe copies of this book to the students from two on-line classes which I’ve taught.

Other than that, I honestly have no idea why I did this. I’m sure it won’t sell very many copies–there are a number of books out there which claim to teach new authors how to publish. Granted, I think mine will make the process really easy to understand and I do give step by step instructions on how to format. So, I would argue, that mine is a good investment.

I suppose this was just something I had to do. But now I’ve done it. I can not worry about it any longer (having this promise of a book hanging over my head was bothering me) and try to go about my business—if I have any left.

So, if you’re a new author or know of any, you might want to take a look at the book. It is cleverly called Self-Publishing: Easy as ABC and can be found, for the moment, only on Amazon. I will be uploading it to other retailers soon and a POD version will be available any day now as well.

On the up-side, the book was fun to put together and it was even more fun presenting it as a PowerPoint to a group of newbie authors last week in Culpepper, Virginia.