Publishing houses no longer promote or market the books they publish. Together with the fact that most publishing houses only offer contracts to established (ie. money-making) writers can make getting a publishing contract as a new author nearly impossible. In this way, every author, whether self-publishing or publishing traditionally, is in the same boat – you must market and promote your own work.
There is one rather obvious benefit to this situation of course. Self-publishing gives all of the control back to authors. If you're going to do all of the work yourself anyway, you might as well research your options and give yourself the best possible deal you can. Amazon may be the easiest platform, making them very attractive to new writers, but they're not the last (not yet at least). No matter what, there will be substantial work involved in publishing your own book, so choose wisely.
No matter what kind of book you're going to publish, you'll need to have your own following. Having an established platform and readership can make a big difference in your book sales to start, but you'll need to continue to network to keep the numbers growing.
And don't forget to keep writing. With a big fan base and lots of sales, you'll need to have that next great read ready for publishing.
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