Self-Publishing on Amazon

I recently completed a small study of the number of books self published by authors using several large, web-based self publishing companies for paperback, hardcover and Kindle versions of their books. Not too surprisingly, CreateSpace is used more often that other major competitors for hardcopy books. In fact the ratio is almost three to one.

Note that the numbers of Kindle books in the chart are not necessarily predictive of the actual total numbers.  Many may have listed their "Publisher" as an independent name rather listing it as Amazon or Kindle Direct Publishing.  I suspect that there are a huge number of these not reflected in the chart.

Be careful when selecting your own publisher. There have been reports of bad experiences with some of them.

Publisher	Paper Back	Hardcover	Kindle
IUniverse	41889	2344	10414
CreateSpace	144245	9	2214
LuLu	58925	1985	1549
Blurb	96	141	23
Amazon Publishing	245	330	4512
Kindle Direct	0	0	74
DogEar	2022	143	72
Arbor	2741	2967	13
Aventine	661	47	8
Llumina	1160	148	56
BookLocker	2737	134	79
Xlibris	40800	10635	6366
Trafford	17630	765	1242
Outskirts	8011	447	353
AuthorHouse	57683	4273	11739
PublishAmerica	45584	1157	545
Infinity	6518	123	201
Tate	8577	498	749
Xulon	8897	781	349

The Day I Became an Author

     My son asked me to review a draft of a science fiction book he was writing.  I was happy to help him out since I had plenty of free time.  After being in the main stream corporate world for many years I was able to finally leave to pursue my goal of doing nothing. Well, it hasn't quite worked out that way but that's another story.

     So I set about providing comments and editing corrections for his book on my trusty laptop.  It took me several days to complete.  His first attempt was not bad.  Neither he nor I had taken more than the minimum requirements for literature and other English courses in college since we both matriculated with degrees in science.    So for a first attempt I was duly impressed.   Since then he has almost totally rewritten his book based on writing tips that he has learned on line such as composition, sentence structure and "showing" rather than "telling".      

     Now... for the day I became an author.  The day I finished my review of his initial attempt, I decided that I could write a book.  In prior years I promised that I would get around to writing a novel someday.  Equipped with a new sense of the possibility I started to write.  I made a very casual outline but I had a story to tell.  I have finally finished writing that story and now am in my own edit phase.  My son has returned the favor of a review and has given me many wonderful ideas on scenes that he felt would improve the story.  Thanks, Brian.

    So I feel like an author.  My only goal is to write something that is entertaining and I have great hope that I have accomplished that goal.  Now I would like to get the book into the hands of readers. People that will love it.   An entire industry has evolved for marketing and promotion of self published books.  This blog format is one but all of the other social media services are on the band wagon. 

   That too is the story for another blog but here is a little taste.  Twitter. That's right.  Marketing through Twitter.  

My last Tweet:

   

  After a lifelong background in left brain thinking I find that I can be creative. I simply write the scenes I see happening in my right brain.