At one time, publishing a book was a time-consuming process that involved many people with specialized talents and layers of specific tasks. Since the advent of the personal computer, making a book has changed dramatically. Today, after some basic instruction, almost anyone can produce and publish his or her own book.

Self-publishing is simply contracting with a self-publishing packager or a printing company to be your production department. You own all rights to the book and only pay for what services you need to get that book into print. You control every aspect of the work.

This is not the same process as vanity or subsidy publishing, where the author pays all the costs in producing and marketing the book, yet the publishing company often ends up owning all or some of the rights to the book. For example, royalties are only paid by publishers who have rights to a book. Therefore, if you are offered a royalty for your self-published book, you are in effect being told that the publisher is retaining rights to your book.

Self-publishing has an honorable tradition: Mark Twain, Zane Grey, Walt Whitman, William Blake, Robert Burns, Henry Thoreau, Herman Melville, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and Carl Sandburg, among others, were all self-publishers at one time. Check out what our clients have to say about their experience self-publishing with Evanston Publishing.