Self-publishing made easy

by Brittany Geragotelis

I've already said on here that I'm fully ready to publish my books myself if the mainstream publisher thing doesn't work out (although I do have a phone call with a publisher today to discuss doing edits on my book Painless for possible publication!). I think we live in a really exciting time, where we hold the future of our passion in our hands. Whether you're an aspiring musician, actor, filmmaker, artist or author, technology is out there which allows us to bring our craft to the masses—something that used to only be relegated to the elite gatekeepers who would decide what was worthy of public consumption. This is no longer the only way a person can be successful doing what they love (Um, hello? Look at bigtime author Christopher Paolini who published his book Eragon himself, before it became a national hit!).

I met with a 16-year-old cheerleader on Monday who recently published her first young adult novel. Now, I've read plenty of self-published books over the years, both for the magazine, and now on Wattpad.com; some of it's good and some of it's bad. The point is: I get to make up my own mind about what's worthy of me reading or not.

But back to this girl's book. After chatting with her for a few minutes, I found out that she hadn't really been interested in writing until she fell back in love with reading. And then she used writing as an outlet for what she was experiencing in high school. Before she knew it, she was writing a book, one which followed a girl who didn't fit in at her school or with her classmates...mostly because she has supernatural powers!

I've started reading the book and while it's admittedly, a little unpolished, it pulled me in from the start and is actually an interesting and fun read. Now, I'm only about 100 pages in, but I'm rather impressed with what this teenager has done. After trying to get an agent for her book and being rejected, she decided to publish it herself.

Now, if you're out there and have taken the time to write your own book and feel like it deserves to be out there for all to read, there are plenty of print-on-demand publishers to choose from. I recently came across this article about Amazon's CreateSpace and found it to be really interesting. Be sure to check it out if you're thinking about self-publishing. There are a lot of great outlets out there for us creative types, all we have to do is use them!

5x5,
B.