Future of Book publishing and how to self publish a book

No one would have believed in the early years of 21st century that publishing world was being watched by intelligences greater than our own. As agents and publisher busied themselves about their various concerns; they observed and studied, the way a man might scrutinized the creatures as they multiply through microscope in a drop of water. With infinite compliances, publishers went through and fro about their empire over the book world. Yet across the gulf of Silicon Valley, intellects vast, cooled, and unsympathetic, regarded the publishing world with envious eyes, and slowly and surly drew their plan against them.

It first began with the uprising in the independent author world, as companies like lulu, and createspace gave those undermined geniuses across the world a chance to showcase their prodigies. The flood of authors came like a tsunami, as no longer were these creative geniuses were walking with a ball-&-chain of contracts, commitments of publishers, and no longer banging on every publishing house doors to have their worked looked at and praised. Whatever anyone wrote a book after 2004, the author no longer rested their work on a dusty desk or shelf, rather at a speed of thought they released the book at their own desecration. An author, who was never considered seriously or ever given a chance was now holding his own paperback book in his or her hands. Although the self publishing world was still at its infant stages with lots of room to grow, nevertheless it had arrived.

In the beginning an author could not sell their books through print on demand, rather they had to either pay 200-500 to join a print on demand publisher, or buy pre-printed books to sell on their own. Then, in the growing pain stages of the indie-book world lulu.com came and made everything free, from joining to publishing and selling. Lulu was the first of its kind, by not charging anything to an author upfront, rather making a back end small commission once the book sold. Even though I personally don’t like the idea of buying a proof copy to approve a book, which is just a way for these indie houses to make a book off of even you as an author, it’s still a sweet deal considering one proof copy will cost you $10.00.

But now even the self publishing world has evolved, because not only well established authors are taking an independent route and dumping their publishers, but the actual buying and selling of books is slowly decreasing since the invasion of Kindle and iPad. The digital way of viewing books may be criticized by the people born before 1995, however, each generation claims to be the best, and the generation ‘I’, which stands for everything ‘Apple’, doesn’t care to flip through pages, when they can drag through screen. Even, I feel that hard books should not go away, and should stay forever, after all, how does an author supposed to sign during book signing; your iPad? No matter if you write sci-fi books, fantasy books, romance or non-fictional, the beauty of book signing and having books on a shelf has its own ‘beauty’, which may not fit well with the new generation, but antique furniture is always more expensive and desirable than the new.