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Questions about self-publishing pop up all the time in writing groups. It is a subject that creates some very heated discussions. On one side you have people telling you self-publishing is the way to go. On the other side you have people telling you not to self-publish unless you want to end your career before it starts. So who do you believe?

First you need to look at what you have written. Is it a fiction novel? A series of short stories? A notebook full of poetry? Or is it non-fiction? For the sake of the first part of this article I will cover fiction novels.

So you have written a book. Now what? Your friends and family are telling you it's great and that you should get it published. You decide that you want to self-publish. Let's say you decide to use the very popular method of POD(print on demand) publishing. On sites like lulu.com it's free, unless you want to purchase one of their packages to get an ISBN. So you rush right in and publish the book, but there is a problem. It did not format correctly from your Word program to PDF format. Now your chapters aren't separated the way they should be and it just looks crappy.

Hmmm, there are services that will format the book. I think I'll use one of them. So, you wind up shelling out a couple of hundred dollars, give or take a bit, to have your book properly formatted. Great! That's one road block out of the way.

You choose a cover, though it is not what you really wanted, set the price, and wait for the money to roll in. The money is going to roll in isn't it? You check your sales every day and so far only your parents, grandparents, Uncle Bob, and a couple of your friends have purchased it. Oh, wait a minute, I bought those books for my friends and family. I figured I would make a big enough profit to give a few books away. Well time rolls by and you still don't have any sales.

You decide it is time to branch out so you purchase one of their distribution packages. Yipee! Your book is now listed on barnesandnoble.com and amazon.com. Surely that will create a spike in sales. You manage to sale a few books, but the reviews are not good. You read reviews that say your book is poorly written, that more editing should be done, or there was no depth to your characters.

Yikes! Now what am I supposed to do? I've spent all this money on distribution packages and formatting and I have nothing to show for it. I know what I'll do. I'll join every myspace writing group there is and send out "advertisements" to each group about

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