How To Self-publish your books and sell them on Amazon.com. How Do you decide if you should self-publish your book or not? Here are a few questions you need to ask yourself first.

1) Can you be a businessperson as well as a writer? Writing is a quiet occupation while business takes a lot of communication skills.

2) Are you Motivated? You will want to see your book through from beginning to end.

3) Are you willing to take a risk? You can't be afraid to take the plunge. You have to believe in yourself.

Above are just a short version of some of the questions you need to ask yourself before getting started.

Other things you need to learn are about Writing and Designing your manuscript. Research your material, keep it organized and easily accessible.

Draft your back-cover copy before beginning your book. Read the back cover copy of many books in print to get a feel for how to layout this text.

Talk to editors, proofreaders, cover artists and book designers to help you.

Find a cold reader to review your final draft. This will help you locate grammar errors and obtain a opinion from another persons view. Make the book as perfect as you can.

When the book is finished check it for necessary permissions if you quoted others. Design your book, choose your printer and print your book.

Next you will need to distribute and promote your book. The best place to start selling your book is http://www.amazon.com/advantage - this is Amazon's independent publishers program. How it works is you sign up for their program after you have obtained your ISBN number from http://www.bowkerlink.com and fill in the information they request. Review the site for more information. Amazon does take a percentage of your sales I believe it's 55% so have enough profit in your list price to make money for yourself.

Send the first two copies of your book to the United States Copyright Office. See http://www.loc.gov for more information.

Find wholesalers and distributors - read the yellow pages or call a bookstore to learn the local wholesaler and preferred book distributors.

Market to Libraries. Sell to bookstores etc.

Here are some terms you will need to know for publishing your book.. Bar Code - indicates the books identification and prices. Found on the back cover on the book. There are software programs at www.download.com where you can find these to print out.

Bluelines - Printer's proofs designed to catch final errors before printing

Bookbindings - Case bound - hard cover Comb - spiral like plastic bindings used when authors want their book to lay flat. Perfect - a square spine created by gluing the page ends together at the spine. Saddle Stitch - Stapled at the fold like magazines Spiral - Wire binding

ISBN - International Standard Book Number, essential to the identification of a particular book (check out www.bowkerlink.com for more)

The above is just a short synopsis on getting started. There is a lot involved to get your book published but if you find the right market and know what you are doing it can be profitable. Maybe start out with a short, inexpensive booklet and sell it locally and over the Internet.

http://www.bookdrawer.com/Writing/amazonbook.htm