You finish a novel you’ve been working on for months. In your opinion, this is the best book ever written and every person in the world will want to read it. You aren’t able to get a publisher or agent to read your book. However, you won’t give up and this book must be published. You discover several companies that will help you publish your book for a small fee. You think, ‘This is perfect, and I get to keep all the rights.’

Before proceeding, take all the money in your wallet/purse and throw it in the trash can, then go the nearest wall and start pounding your head against it. Once you are passed out on the floor you can stop. After waking up, hopefully you will see the futility in banging your head against the wall. It caused you pain and really got you nowhere. Plus, you’re now broke and probably have a nice headache. This is self publishing in a nutshell.

I truly understand the desire to get a book published. To share your story with the world is incredibly rewarding. However, if it puts you in the poor house, what’s the point? I can speak from personal experience as I did self publish a book. I used iUniverse and thought I was going to be a huge success. I took an ad out in a prominent gay publication with the demographic that my book is about. I thought, ‘I need a lot of books because I’m going to get more orders than I can handle.’ So, iUniverse happily sold me a boat load of books. I got envelopes, a Stamps.Com account, labels and was ready to go. I thought, ‘This is going to be great!’

Screeeeeecchhhhhh! The enthusiasm came to an abrupt halt when I only got an order for 1 book after the ad ran. I paid over $10,000.00 for everything and sold 1 book. Thankfully, I sold a few more after that lack luster start. Of course, I probably threw away, and I mean in the trash, nearly 400 books that were in the closet collecting dust. Since I couldn't afford for a professional editor, mistakes were (are) in there so I didn't see a need to keep them. I have a few left, but I've changed the book so much it wouldn't be worth someone's time to read it. Also, the cover was changed because people were seeing a penis, and after they said something I did too.

I’m sure there are some out there that have had success with self publishing. But for those of us that work to pay the bills, we don’t have the time or funds to attend book shows here and there. We can’t take ads out in every magazine or get a prominent newspaper to give us a review. We have to hope word of mouth gets out. Unfortunately, that can take years. So we struggle with our debt we’ve made, knowing that it will take years for that too.

In closing I recommend that instead of Self Publishing through a Vanity Press, utilize a company like Smash Words and make it available for e-readers. The cost is minimal, yet the market is quite large. You still need to market your book, but at least you won't end up in the poor house.

However, if you can't control yourself and you have to create an actual hard copy book that you hold in your hand, then by all means select any of the many on line companies that are happy to take your money and produce your book. But whatever you do, don’t purchase 500 books thinking you will sell them in one weekend. It’s not going to happen, and you will have to pay for them before selling a single copy. Self Publishing is called Vanity Publishing for a reason. It’s the vanity inside of us that demand it to be done. We stroke our ego with a wonderful book that only a handful of people will ever read.