Photo by nate steiner, via Flickr

All of those are perfectly acceptable options. But what if you want to do something different? What if you look at the options above and your brain just screams, “BORING!”

I have two more options for you: binding your own books (paperback or hardcover) or writing a “blovel”—a blog novel.

Hamish MacDonald was the first person I heard about who was doing his own book binding for his novels. He currently offers four books for sale, all hand-bound by him. He also offers a series of podcasts for the DIY novelist. It’s definitely worth checking out.

Kvasir House Press is another great resource for learning bookbinding and for other information related to self publishing. The owner, Chad Muller, offers an excellent two-part tutorial on how to bind your own books. The directions are excellent, and I honestly can’t wait to try them out myself.

No Media Kings offers a great comparison of self-publishing options that includes instructions for creating your own book press and for binding your own books. Definitely worth a read, though be aware that not all of the information in the self-pub options is accurate (mainly the assertion that POD books are only sold at retail price, which is false).

The other viable option for publishing your own books is to go the ebook route. But instead of going through SmashWords or the Kindle store, why not publish your novel on a blog? Serialized novels used to be quite popular in newspapers and magazines decades ago. Why not due the same thing on your blog? With one chapter released per week (or day), it gives readers a chance to come back to your blog on a regular basis. If you pair this with releasing a print copy of your book, you’re likely to see more sales than you would otherwise. And don’t forget to put a donation button on your blog so readers can support your work!

JungleG has a wonderful post titled “Procrastinating on that novel? Write a Blovel instead.” It gives a basic outline of what their approach to a blovel would be, though there’s plenty of room for customization.

We CAN! Promote Our Books has a great article on experimenting with the whole blovel idea (this time with a YA novel written entirely in poetry).

This idea has become so popular that there’s now a site dedicated entirely to providing authors with a space to write their blovel: Blovel Spot.

I’m sure there are plenty of other unique ways authors are self publishing their books. If you know of any, please share them in the comments below.

Photo by David Masters, via Flickr

I estimated finding an agent would take a minimum of six months, and then finding a publisher would likely take another six (that’s assuming I could even find an agent, and that they could in turn find a publisher—both are far from definite). At that point I’d finish writing the book, another three months. Then it would go to an editor, who would look it over and decide what needed improvement, and then I would edit again, taking another month or two. Hopefully, by then it would be in good enough shape to progress on to line edits and then a copyeditor, taking another few months. All told, I realized I was looking at a minimum of probably two years before my book would ever see the light of day.

TWO YEARS!

Now, without going into too much detail, the subject I’m writing about is likely to change quite a bit in the next two years. And for all I know, there could be a handful of publishers out there with books like mine already in the works that could be realeased months before mine. I could end up releasing a book into a fully-saturated market. Not exactly what I wanted to do.

So I started looking into self-publishing. And the more I read, the more convinced I became that the type of book I’m working on would be very well-suited to going it on my own and becoming an indie publisher. Here are some of the reasons:

• It’s in a very specific niche but still has a very large market (up to 80% of teenagers are likely to be interested, along with plenty of adults)
• It’s particularly well-suited to online, viral marketing campaigns
• It’s not going to be a particularly long book (~250 pages), keeping production costs down
• It’s particularly suited for word of mouth promotion
• The topic and format are likely to get more publicity in particularly appropriate niche sites

I realize that’s all a bit criptic, but I’m still not quite ready to disclose what the topic is. The marketing campaign for the book will be launching in about a month, so everything will be disclosed then.

Now, there are a lot of self-publishing options available to the indie publisher.

There are subsidy presses and vanity presses that sometimes cover part of the expenses of publishing (sometimes the author pays for all of it). Many of these companies are misleading at best in their approach to authors, implying that their imprints are just as respected as the traditional, big publishing houses (they’re not).

There are self-publishing services such as CreateSpace, Blurb, and Lulu (among tons of others) where you pay a setup fee, and either provide editing, copyediting, design and all the other things that go along with producing a book yourself, or pay sometimes exorbitant fees to them to perform those functions. Often, you can provide your own ISBN, meaning that you are your own publisher, not CreateSpace or Lulu or Blurb. Otherwise, they’ll provide you with an ISBN (either for free or a small fee) and they will be listed as your publisher. The biggest drawback to these companies is that the per-book price is often quite high, making it almost impossible to make a profit if you want to remain competitive.

I’ve decided to go it completely alone, without anyone there to hold my hand other than the customer service people at the vendors I’ve chosen. I’ll be setting up my own publishing company (Untime Press, and yes, I have a great story about the origin of the name) and ordering at least one ISBN for said company (probably just one at this point to keep costs down). I’m going to go through Lightning Source for my printing needs (they’re the largest POD printer in the world and a subsidiary of Ingram, one of the largest book distributors in the world). I’ll be doing all of my own layout and design (I have a background in magazine layout and design) and all of my own promotion and marketing (hopefully with some help from a few friends).

It’s a big undertaking. There are tons of things to plan, to organize, to manage, all while I’m writing the book. There are self-imposed deadlines to meet. There are all of my regular writing responsibilities to keep track of, two blogs to manage, and another big website project I’m working on, plus all of my usual household and family responsibilities. I’m thinking it’s probably going to be overload for my Moleskine planner and might require me to look into some online time management apps (luckily, I’ve written at least four articles that should help me in my search for the perfect app).

In the end, though, I think it’s going to be well worth it. This is the kind of project that could take off with a life of its own (I’m hoping it does). I’ll be blogging the process of writing the book and self-publishing it here and you’ll be the first to know when the book’s website is launched later this month.

If anyone has self-publishing tips, non-fiction writing tips, or any other advice for what I’m doing, please post in the comments below!