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89 of 92 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A nice beginning book, but needs more., September 1, 2003
When I first saw the title of this book, I thought the subject matter had to do with publishing your book through a POD publisher or a vanity press. I couldn't have been more wrong. This is a basic instruction book on how to become your own publisher and the cost-effective means of publishing your book. (In fact, Tom & Marilyn Ross devote only a few pages to PODs and vanity presses, saying that if you are looking to sell your book to the general public, these options may not be the best choices.)This book takes you from the beginning of setting up your own publishing business (which is needed even if you plan on publishing only you own works), the different requirements for publishing a book (like obtaining an ISBN and EAN as well as copyright and Library of Congress registration), finding and selecting a book printer, how to go about distributing you books (which you can do yourself or by going through traditional distributers), and even how to market your book. While a good starter book that whets you appitite about the book publishing industry, it falls far short of providing you everything that you need to know in order to do this properly. The authors constantly make reference to the Literary Market Place; a book that, while it is available here on Amazon, comes with a hefty ($) price tag. And while they do provide some inforamative lists, they admit that the lists is not complete and refer you back to the LMP. The book does discuss e-publishing, but only in a scratching-the-surface kind of way. I had to look at other areas to find the information about e-publishing only to discover that I may not want to bother with that at this time. The most disappointing aspect of the book that I found was that most of it (about 70%) is dedicated to trade or self-help publishing. If the book you are planning to publish is a fictional novel, this is going to be of little help to you. When I realized that a topic being discussed was geared for trade publications, I just skipped the topic to save me time. To summarize, this is a great book if you are a beginner and want to explore the publishing world. It's even a great book if you are planning to publish a trade publication. However, I would recommend that if you have any knowledge or if you are seriously pursuing self-publishing you may want to look at other books in this topic to supplement this one, especially if you are planing on publishing works of fictions. As of January 29, 2004: I had previously rated this book at three stars. After reading a number of other books, I have since upgraded this to 4 stars. The reason for this is that this book has been more complete compared to the other books that I have read, plus Tom and Marilyn Ross continue to provide assistance to others online. I am still withholding a star because I think they should have addressed fictional works as much as they did trade books.
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