The Complete Idiot's Guide to Self-Publishing

The book is well written and simplified. It arrived in great shape and was delivered in a timely manner as specified. Would shop with Seller again.

Where "The Well-Fed Self-Publisher" (Peter Bowerman) covers the narrow focus of self-publishing for profit-minded non-fiction writers in a great deal of depth, Jennifer Basye Sander's "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Self-Publishing" covers a lot more ground--but loses much of Bowerman's depth of detail in the process. There are plenty of reasons to self-publish, not all of which have to do with wanting to make a profit in a niche market that might not be received so well (or marketed so well) by a traditional publisher. For instance, you might want to preserve family history and memories for your loved ones. You might want to publish fiction, which operates by somewhat different rules than non-fiction (much of TWFSP could apply to fiction as well, however Bowerman makes no bones about the fact that fiction is harder to turn a profit from when self-publishing). You might have a novel idea for a gift product that loosely falls into the "publishing" milieu. In these cases, you might find Sander's CIGSP to be an equal or better resource. She addresses her book to anyone at all who might wish to self-publish for any reason, and thus covers these aspects better than Bowerman does. There are some other areas in which the CIGSP differentiates itself from TWFSP. Sander comes from a more traditional publishing background originally, unlike Bowerman, and this informs her assumptions. Her marketing suggestions are more mainstream, where Bowerman believes in highly-targeted campaigns that take advantage of whatever niche your subject falls into in order to maximize your return on time investment. Where Bowerman keeps suggestions regarding the choices involved in publishing your book as simple as possible, Sander goes into a great deal of detail regarding everything from paper weights and colors to typefaces and even embossing choices--wonderful if you're planning on creating gift books or the like, but potentially confusing if you're going for the comparatively plain, practical books Bowerman assumes. Sander's book does a good job of providing an overview of self-publishing and handling the myriad of reasons for getting into the business. However, if you're a non-fiction writer looking to make a serious profit, I think TWFSP would do a better job of telling you what you need to know.

This is a must-buy for almost any self publisher because of its excellent discussion of what goes into producing a book of commercial quality -- the subject in which most books on self publishing are weakest. In other words, read this book so you won't give yourself away as a self publisher! I suggest, though, that you supplement it with Morris Rosenthal's book Print-on-Demand Book Publishing, for a more advanced look at the possibilities in print on demand and online bookselling.