The easiest way to publish a book today is by producing an ebook. Ebooks are written and edited like printed books, only they are not printed. Instead, they are laid out for easy on-screen reading for distribution online. Ebooks have been made popular by Internet marketers and new authors who are looking for a quicker, cheaper way to publish their works. To publish an ebook, all you need is a PDF creator program, like Adobe, and a delivery method. Many ebook publishers choose to sell their books using a company like Clickbank to act as an intermediary and process payments. Other publishers advertise their ebooks on their own websites and sell through a merchant account or Paypal.
Kindle
Kindle is a new device sold by Amazon.com that has offered businesses a convenient way of publishing books without worrying about the works being stolen or copied. Customers can purchase Kindle books on Amazon's site and upload them automatically to the Kindle device. The pages turn just like a book, and the device is as thin as a pencil. Publishers simply send their book manuscript files to Amazon to be converted into Kindle files (AZW format). Then the Kindle books are published for sale on Amazon.com within a matter of weeks.
Traditional Publishers
As of April 2009, there were six large, traditional publishing houses--Random House, Time Warner, Simon & Schuster, Holtzbrinck, HarperCollins ands Penguin--that were still responsible for the bulk of successfully published printed books. Because of innovation and tough times in the publishing industry, these traditional publishers are usually more apt to put out books that are written by celebrities, dignitaries and other high-profile writers to ensure solid sales.
Self-Publishing
The book industry has been flooded with self-published tomes over the past couple of decades due to the rise of self-publishing services like Lulu, Createspace (Amazon) and iUniverse. These services allow anyone with a story and a book design to self-publish with just a small upfront investment. Some self-publishers take the traditional route to producing books by having small quantities of books printed (500 to 2,000 copies) at once and then selling on websites and at book signings. There are an estimated 86,000 self-publishers in the United States.There is a lot of controversy about whether or not self-publishing is good for the book industry, because there is no filtering process. However, self-publishing has given many writers who are not accepted by traditional publishers the opportunity to start small businesses and publicize their works.
