No Grandma It's an e-book

One of the biggest myths is that publishing a book has to cost a lot of money. This myth is repeated so frequently that it is usually accepted without challenge. In fact, it is usually accompanied by words like “a book is a labor of love” or “it’s just important to get your message out there.” The underlying sentiment here is that because it is a labor of love or because its just important to get the book out, that is acceptable to lose money.

One of the reasons that the myth of losing money has thrived for so long was because there were no cheap sources for making your book a reality. As a result, authors would have to spend a considerable amount of money on editors, graphic artists and publishers to realize their dream of publication. Further, because authors had spent all this money, there was a need to sell a lot of books to recoup the funds that were spent. And since most authors don’t sell a lot of books it fed the myth that you can expect to lose money. Further, spending additional dollars on marketing your book only adds more expense and increases the number of books that needed to be sold to break even. All these factors together have helped make the notion of breaking even, mythical and losing money and unchallenged certainty.

Writing a book doesn’t have to be merely a cathartic exercise or an altruistic adventure where you sacrifice your finances for the betterment of the masses. If I had bought into these notions, I never would have never kept searching for different low-cost publishing sources until I found Kindle Direct Publishing. I have published my last two print/e-books for FREE on https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/ 

Later in this book, I will discuss it’s merits and limitations. I will also discuss the merits of using sources like https://www.fiverr.com/ to find competent, yet inexpensive graphic artists, editors, translation and marketing services, etc.

I am in a place now where I have strapped on the mentality that writing books is a business. No one starts a business with an assurance that they will lose money, especially indefinitely. There is no way to keep making books if the books you make don’t make you money or at least break even. If I had accepted that losing money as an author was a given, I would have kept marching down traditional paths of book publishing and been stuck in a holding pattern until I got the money to publish my next book. Instead, I kept searching for ways to reduce the costs…just like you would in any other business.