[Julien]

Originally Posted by SweetJane

Julien,
Yes you can self-publish, but I'd avoid Amazon and look at a place like Star Publish.

My recommendation, though, is to find a small press and shop your book around. Most will respond in 8-10 weeks. And some places will take multiple submissions, meaning you shop it to more than one publisher at the same time.

You should have the book completed. Most publishers won't even consider a book idea or an incomplete manuscript.

Non-fiction is hard to sell to a publisher but, depending on the book and the publisher, you can often get a contract. Poetry is the hardest to sell.

Though I have all my books at Amazon (through a small independent publishing house), I ALWAYS tell people to go to directly to my publisher's bookstore and avoid Amazon. Authors get a bigger cut of the pie and so does the publishing house than when we go through Amazon. My publisher places books in every conceivable distribution network out there in the US and Canada. But the publisher's bookstore has ALL of the formats you would get at Amazon (for Kindle), Barnes & Nobel (for Nook), and the generic epub format for Sony eReaders and others like it. It also offers a PDF. Some of our books are also available in print.

Amazon isn't very author or publisher friendly. It now has a return policy for ebooks. Why? Makes no friggin' sense. If the file is damaged, then replace it. But they encourage people to abuse the system by offering that.

It's just a word of caution from someone who's been there.

SweetJane,
Thank you so much for the information about self-publishing and places like Amazon. I do have a completed manuscript, I just have to tweak and revise one chapter to include _Albert Nobbs_ book and film. My conclusions I made in the original chapter still holds true for this film. So my work isn't too difficult to do. I'll be sure to let the thread know how it goes, good or not so good. Thanks again for you information and support.

Julien