You can write and publish your own books

Here are many of the best loved Traditional Christmas melodies in a very easy edition with note name noteheads. The book contains simple single line melodies with chord letters and is suitable for keyboard, descant or tenor recorder in particular but also good for busking on any instrument. Designed with young children and the visually impaired in mind with easy to see large print notes. Download or spiral bound book available.

Contents: Away In A Manger, Coventry Carol, Deck The Halls,Ding Dong Merrily On High, For Auld Lang Syne, Gaudete, Good King Wenceslas, Hark The Herald Angels Sing, Holy Night, Il Est Ne Le Divin Enfant, In Dulce Jubilo, Jingle Bells, Joy to the World, Noel Nouvelet, O Little Town Of Bethlehem, See Amid the Winter's Snow, Silent Night, The Angel Gabriel, The Crown Of Roses, The Huron Carol, The Seven Joys of Mary, Unto Us A Boy Is Born, We Three Kings Of Orient Are, We Wish You A Merry Christmas

Why would you want to be publishing your own books? The advantage of conventional publication is obvious; all the stress of marketing and promotion is taken off your shoulders, no design problems, no networking, no financial outlay. If you are lucky the publisher will give you an advance on royalties and then you sit back and count the pennies roll in....

Except.... wait a minute! In the competitive market we now have an unknown author has to have so much persistence and drive to get published. Even Harry Potter had a trail of rejection slips! Why not turn all that letter writing, waiting, networking and anguish into a bigger royalty? You are doing it anyway trying to promote your work to a publisher in a contracting market full of ghost-written books with celebrity front men!

Certainly in poetry you are wasting your time looking for a big publisher unless you are either already famous or a respected literature professor. Looking for book publishers online can be depressing - they charge hundreds of dollars and this is indeed vanity publishing at its most exploitative.

Poetry book publishing is a grey area too. Many small magazines publish poetry books as a sideline, but they don't really market your work. My first publisher didn't even read the manuscript I sent. There were two very silly mistakes I had missed in the original copy and he didn't even spot them, they went through to proof! I am not talking little typos here, but glaring errors in the title of a poem! So, you have to do everything yourself and anyway using Lulu saved on the book publishing costs bigtime....

Self publishing childrens books, poetry, recipe books, personal histories and coffee table volumes is easy with print on demand printers hiring themselves out to firms like Lulu. It is free until you buy and DRM (digital rights management) is available on e-books for a small fee. Publishing your own books gives you huge editorial control. You control not just fonts and font sizes, but illustrations, layout and cover. The books you sell give you a much improved royalty rate and an ISBN allows access to Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Many on-line services will be advertising your book within weeks.

The big disadvantage is the time you will certainly have to spend trying to sell your wares. Give too much away and people don't need to buy, give too little and you are asking them to invest in the unknown. There is also the disadvantage that the conventional writing fraternity get a bit sniffy about what they call "vanity publishing" and will put you down without bothering even to read; but who said they would accept you anyway? You are after all a rival! Some of the greatest writers of all time were self-published in the first instance, especially in the field of poetry.

If I were to write a potential best-seller - a Harry Potter of the future, say - I think I would be inclined to try the conventional route first, but for my poetry and music books the niche is a small one. For now, I will stick with Lulu.

Some crazy animals at Persimew's Place! We have bellydancing camels, mummies and snakes and many other beautiful gifts and products! Just click on the images!

Shimmying Snake by persimew



Funny Green Frankenstein by persimew



Camel Dance by persimew
Design


Spirit of the Corn by persimew

We all know how successful Harry Potter has become, yet getting that first book published was not easy even for J.K.Rowling! Publishing a children's book is difficult because there is so much competition. Anyone who can write or illustrate presumes they can get a children's book published, yet it is not easy to get the attention of publishers even if you have a fantastic idea to appeal to the imagination of children! Publishing books online gives you a chance to test the market, or simply copyright your work in a more readable form for an agent. Perhaps you are a teacher wanting to publish stories by your class? This is the sort of thing that would require a limited run. Print on demand publishing seems made for schools and project work!