I was publishing NCEast, a regional magazine; the North Carolina Travel and Tourism Guide, Welcome to Wilmington, a slick four-color newcomer'sguide to this major metropolitan area; Homebuyer's Handbook, a real estate buyer's guide; Washington and Beaufort County Magazine, a city magazine; and Renter's Helper apartment directories in nine mid-Atlantic cities. Earlier I had published the Mecklenburg Gazette, a weekly newspaper, and Dollarsworth, a free circulation shopper.

My new Self Publishers Bible: A Handbook for Publishing Entrepreneurs is now out and available. I have worked on this book for years and crammed it full of writing and publishing trade secrets learned over a lifetime in the business.

The Self Publisher’s Bible: A Handbook for Publishing Entrepreneurs answers completely and authoritatively the questions posed almost daily by newcomers to the business of publishing.
But this book does much more than that.

• Arranged in encyclopedic format for easy use, the personal and anecdotal style of this book, growing out of the author’s own experience, invites browsing into areas that many readers may not even know enough to ask about.
  Especially useful are the lengthy entries on secondary profit centers that can spell the difference between success and failure in home-based, entrepreneurial publishing. This discussion is unique to this book
  Also unique are the entries on specialty book projects with fast turnaround and very high potential for substantial, quick profit and the discussion of the profitability of advertising-based periodicals well within the capabilities of self-publishers.
  The Self-Publisher’s Bible targets not only those readers who want to publish a single book but those who want to convert their publishing enterprise into a sustainable, income-producing, home-based business.

Read sample pages in a free download by clicking here.

To own this book call 912-352-0404 for a $5 discount and free mailing,  or click here to buy from Amazon.

To find  a niche in your own city or town, start with what I call a “census of niches.” This is a technique for identifying all the niche market possibilities that exist there. After you do this, you evaluate each niche to see how it matches the seven-point checklist.

Below is the wording of a half inch display ad I run in the Yellow Pages (the real ones) of my telephone directory. The cost is $38.50 per month:

WILLIAMS & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
Trade Books • Private editions
Book Packagers • Family and Regional History
www.Pubmart.com  www.PublishingEntrepreneur.com
1317 Pine Ridge Drive Savannah, GA 352-0404

This half inch ad is quite visible, since the yellow is dropped out and, unlike the ads around it, it appears white against a the yellow background. This single ad generates a net income of thirty to forty thousand dollars a year from my secondary profit centers of editing and publishing private editions, memoirs not meant for the trade, personal poetry collections, and consulting for other self-publishers. Many inquirers want me lead them through the process of book editing, design, and publication.

The revenue generated by this little ad makes it possible for me to live my life solely on my words-and-books work without having to rely on income from some other job to buy groceries and pay the rent. The same is true of many other publishers of my acquaintance. A cross listing appears under “book printers.” I have found that most people who need and want the services I list in my ad have little idealittle idea where to get them. My ad solves the problem for them.

I answer every call personally and am happy to explain the steps involved in getting a book edited and produced, sometime spending fifteen or twenty minutes answering a call. I give lots of what some might consider free advice. A large number of these calls are converted into sales.

POD stands for “print on demand,” and is a digital printing technology enabling a publisher to print as few as two or three dozen copies of a book at an affordable price, something that was never before possible by any means. This technology has had a major impact on the publishing business. Because of it the publisher no longer needs to print several thousand books before discovering whether on nor his book will sell. The phrase, however, has come to be used in two very different ways, and it is important to distinguish between them.