It’s common for those of us who want to write and publish a book to mis-understand the nature of the business.   First, we typically underestimate the challenge of getting a publisher’s attention and then we overestimate the money we will see from book publishing. 

I’ve seen the faces and heard the disappointment in the voices of those who have had a long-held dream to publish your book when they discover that traditional published book authors receive tiny royalties – under a couple of dollars for most titles. 

Inevitably, we now consider self-publishing, with the possibility of publishing your book being much more real than in the past as various companies now specialize in catering to self published authors.  Book editors, designers, packagers and printers all offer their services up as alternatives to book publishing companies. 

The fees are not bad either – for less than $1,000 you can take a Microsoft Word manuscript and have someone edit, layout, design a cover and package your book to be printed where you then have various options for profitably having copies of your books produced for distribution and sale.

Nowaday, the biggest challenge you have as an aspiring writer, speaker and entrepreneur is how to select a market, topic and title for your book so that it will become a top seller in your marketplace.   These are the challenges we focus on in The Ultimate Information Entrepreneur’s Success Package – where the same information in a non-fiction book can be turned into reports, audios ,membership sites, home study packages resulting in a self publishing profit center well beyond what you would get through book publishing alone. 

All that said, you do still need to watch for potential pitfalls when setting out to publish a book.  As experienced writer and self publisher Colin Tipping tells us in this excellent blog post, there are some major GOTCHA’S you need to watch out for when writing and publishing your own books. 

After having initial success with self publishing Colin tells of the pitfalls that can befall unsuspecting book writers in both the traditional publishing game (where a major publisher was acquired and his book was shelved) to issues with packagers and printers (delays and lost contracts). 

Still, Colin’s story is one of incredible success – where he captured a market about which he was passionate, stuck to his strengths and pioneered his success through self-publishing to the point where he has now sold over 100,000 books. 

If your goal is to publish a book – here are some basic tips for you:

1. Understand your audience and tap into emotional desire with your topic and title – you can use The Ultimate Information Entrepreneur Success Package to help you hone your selection and positioning of your book or info product.

2. GIven that you will have to take a very active role in promoting your book, ebook or info product yourself anyway, don’t be afraid to pursue the self publishing route.  You will get to keep a much bigger share of your profits, get your book to market much faster with less hassle and stick to your guns regarding your topic and content. 

3. Be careful if traditional publishers come knocking.  It may be flattering to get an offer from a major publishing house, but make sure you have a specialty lawyer review the contract and weigh the potential disruption taking 2-years to work through your publisher may have on your business.

4. Look at your book as a launchpad for higher, back-end products and services.  Whether you make $1.00 per copy of your book or $8 shouldn’t matter as much in the long-run as what you make on the back end through seminars, membership support sites, DVD or audio packages, or partner offers – the idea is channel as much of your audience into opt-in lists so you can expose them to additional products and services they find attractive – that will turn your 5-figure income into a 6-figure or 7-figure online business. 

Publish a book, definitely – there’s never been a better time, but keeping a keen eye out for common pitfalls is just intelligent business.