Excerpt
You Can Publish Your Own Book

The secret to success as a small book publisher lies in publishing for a niche market. For example, if you are a woodworker, seamstress, or teddy bear designer who has learned secrets likely to benefit others in the same field, you're a book publisher just waiting to be born.

Although the fields of art and crafts are big niche markets in their own right, each has many smaller niches of its own. Take woodworking for example. Within this niche market are countless individuals interested in specific types of woodworking, such as woodcarving, woodturning, woodburning, and marquetry, to the kinds of products that can be made from wood, such as home accessories, furniture, toys, games, or jewelry.

In an article for SPAN Connection (newsletter of the Small Publishers Association of North America, author and self-publisher Gordon Burgett emphasized how easy it is for anyone with a computer to publish books today and pointed to the market for books that are need-meeting or hope-fulfilling: "Today, anybody can produce a tightly-targeted book that is page-made at home, zip it off to the printer for a short turnaround, then sell it to several hundred or many thousands of eager souls at costs that make the pages a bargain."

As one who has self-published some of her own books, I can confirm the profitability of putting words into printed book form and offering them to others by mail. These days, however, as an older writer who no longer wants to handle inventories of printed books, I am far more excited by the possibilities of electronic publishing and marketing, and you can easily find thousands of Web pages on this topic by searching for "eBook publishing" on Google or Yahoo. A search for "self publishing" or "writing books" will turn up literally millions of other Web pages of possible interest. Remember that a study of only a few Web sites or the reading of a couple of books will open a world of possibilities for you.