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A lot of people come up to me at book signing events to ask me about the self-publishing business, and a few aspiring writers often ask me how they can self-published, too. This page is dedicated to answering some of those questions for curious site visitors.

Let's say you've been working on your story for a while (whether it be six months or ten years) and now, after all the time and effort that has been put into writing it, you are relieved to know that you have finally finished it... but you're not really done yet. The next stage in the self-publishing process is one of the toughest stages to tackle: the dreaded editing.

When it comes to editing manuscripts, I've found that it's mostly a two--maybe three--person job, if you can find the extra person. First, you read through the manuscript yourself to find errors and correct them. Then, give the newly corrected version to someone else so that they can read through it and find any errors you may have missed. After that, consider giving it to one more person to read just in case. However, you also have the option of hiring a professional editor, which of course is not free. But no matter what rout you take when getting your story ready for publication, it's important to make your manuscript as flawless as possible before you go to publish it.

As far as cover art or inside illustrations go, you have to be the one to come up with how they should look and sketch them out. Then, there's the matter of hiring just the right illustrator who will take your sketches and draw them out in the artistic style of your choice (unless you plan to illustrate the book yourself). For self-published authors, I reccomend looking on websites like deviantART, Fanart Central, SheezyArt, etc. for an illustrator. There are both professional and freelance artist out there, and most of the freelance artists are almost at the professional calliber! Another thing I love about these artists is that, even though they are not free, their payment rates are quite reasonable. Depending on weather you hire a proffesional or a freelance illustrator and how much work is put into the cover, the price varies. Professionals may want a good chunk of cash, while freelancers may just want a little gas money. It may seem like you're paying a lot at first, but it's only a one time fee. You pay them once, and you're done, where as some proffesional artists may want a percentige of every book that is sold, meaning that you have to keep paying them over and over again.

When it comes to the kind of self-publisher you decide to use, you have to follow their certain guidelines when getting your book ready for publishing. Every publisher is different, and so far I've only used a publisher called Lulu. I would go ahead and explain the many picky details that Lulu requires, but that would be a whole seperate webpage in itself! You can find out more about Lulu by visiting the official site: http://www.lulu.com/

It may seem like editing, illustrating, and publishing your book was the hard part, but the hardest part is yet to come! When you're a self-published author, you do EVERYTHING yourself: buy the books, promote the books, organize book events, try to go to every local event in your area to set up a booth and sell your book, submit press releases in the news paper, hang up posters--and on top of all this, don't quite your day job!

However, if you want to aim higher and submit your manuscript to bigger publishers, my advice is to read a lot of the latest books--preferably the ones on best seller lists--to get a good idea of what kind of books publishers are accepting these days. Aside from writing, I also read a lot of books, and I've come up with this conclusion: These days, it doesn't matter how well written a book is. If it's a good story that moves along and is a real page turner, then it will sell. But, of course, that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to make your book as well written as possible, and you should always be open to helpful and constructive critisism.

I hope that this advice helps you, and good luck to all of you aspiring writers out there!