As so many writers have discovered, online publishing opens new doors.
Self-publishing is a fantastic opportunity to get books published and available to readers all around the world.
You don’t need a traditional publisher to access a worldwide market.
Self-publishing involves a learning curve that requires you to learn new skills. In fact, writing a book often seems like the easiest part of the process.
Online publishing and self-publishing
Discovering that a book will not sell itself, new authors need to learn how to leverage the online world through social media, websites, blogs, advertising, and promotion.
All of these require at least basic technical knowledge.
For those authors who are willing and eager to learn, they can develop very good Internet and technical knowledge.
In the process, many also discover that self-publishing leads them to publish online.
The two are, by necessity, intertwined.
To get the word out to the world about a book, the best means at an author’s disposal is always to use blogging as a publishing platform.
Writing articles that inform, entertain, and attract attention is indispensable.
They are very easy to transmit to the world via social media, and more importantly, they will be indexed by search engines.
Getting people to take notice of a book is not easy.
But getting people to read an article about a book or books is much easier.
It’s all about the freedom to write and be read
My passion for publishing goes back a very long time.
I started learning how to use a printing press in high school.
Then later, I began my apprenticeship in the printing and publishing industry.
One of the first presses I used was an Albion Press. It is pictured on the left and dates me somewhat.
What fascinated me the most was the history.
During my apprenticeship, I studied Johannes Gutenberg, Alois Senefelder, and William Caxton and how the printing revolution started the modern period of human history.
The advent of movable type changed the world forever.
With it came the challenge to the power of political and religious authorities.
If there was a time when the freedom to express one’s beliefs and ideas came to pass, the advent of the printing press and movable type revolution was the time.
Years later, I sensed a similar historical change and challenge to the ruling elite when the Internet gave every writer the technology to be published and read anywhere in the world.
I am not talking about when ebooks arrived. It was well before that time when ezines or online magazines began.
These then led to weblogs, which we now know simply as blogs.
As I type away, I know that the words I am writing here will be read by a few people, at least, or perhaps by thousands. But my words will be read.
That is why I am still passionate about the publishing process and writing about it.
Harness the power of online publishing in the form that works for you
Not every author who self-publishes a book or ebook is successful. The nature and fact of book publishing are that very few books sell well. It’s a lottery.
But this should not dissuade authors from continuing to publish.
One of my favorite ways to demonstrate how book publishing success works is to mention William Golding.
If you know the name, you will know that he wrote a famous book, Lord of the Flies.
He was also a Nobel Prize winner.
But he wrote almost twenty other books, but few people can name one of them.
Unlike William Golding, writers and authors today have the tools at their fingertips to write and be read in so many different ways.
If writing books is not bringing the financial rewards you might have hoped for, there are many other ways to make money from your writing.
Sure, keep writing books; like Golding, one might become your Lord of the Flies.
But while you wait, look for ways to leverage the tools at your fingertips to add to your writing income.
There are so many opportunities for writers to publish their writing today.
These include ghostwriting, online content writing, freelance article writing, guest writing, and professional blogging, to name a few.
All of these are income-producing and are not dependent on making sales on book retailers like Amazon, Apple, and Kobo.
They don’t even involve advertising and promotion time and expense.
Yet, they are all still facets of the publishing service.
Write for others, or publish what you write
There are two choices for making money from short-form or article writing.
The first is to write for others and sell your articles, and the second is to publish yourself and monetize your site.
You can make money from article writing in two primary ways. One is to get someone to buy an article.
The other way is to write for sites for free but to include one or two affiliate links within the text to earn income.
It is quite easy to find sites that accept content writers by doing a Google Search for ‘Write For Us.’
This is usually the title of the page on most websites that are looking for guest writers.
For writers new to content and article writing, guest writing for sites and blogs with a lot of traffic is the best place to begin.
It doesn’t involve investment other than time and can produce an income stream relatively quickly.
Creating your blog
The other option is to build your site and publish your articles.
But, it takes a long time to build a new site or blog and make it profitable. For this reason, many writers choose the first option and write for others as a starting point.
On each page, you can see the disclaimer on this site and how it earns income. So, this tells you what methods I use.
My site is now earning its way. But it took well over a year to build up enough traffic to cover the set-up and ongoing expenses involved and to turn a profit.
It involved a lot of writing, a lot of time, and a little financial investment.
But now that I’ve done the hard work of the initial set-up, the site continues growing steadily.
While building a new site needs some business acumen, I still derive most of my pleasure from writing.
I am writing, and you are reading. It is still the reason why I love publishing in any form.
Online publishing is all about your writing
No matter how you use or plan to use publishing to take advantage of your skills, always keep in mind that there are so many ways you can make money from your words.
You can sell printed books (print-on-demand POD), ebooks, or articles.
If you want to make writing and publishing your career, it is absolutely possible today.
As with any business, diversifying is always the best way to protect your earnings in the long term.
Yes, keep writing and self-publishing ebooks and books.
But perhaps think about branching out into content and article writing as another way of making money from your writing.
If you find some success, you could then look at starting your own site and developing it into a monetized blog.
There has never been a better time to be a writer.
But perhaps my parting words should be, don’t put all your (writing) eggs in one basket.
Related reading: The Top 10 Free Article Submission Sites For New Writers
Thank you for letting me know about article writing. I e-published my first book ‘The Hartnetts’ six months ago and I am currently preparing another for e-publication. What is the best way to get into article writing and how do I find out about people who want people to do it?
Hi Tom. The way to get started in article and content writing is by searching for high profile sites that offer an invitation to write for them. By way of example, if you look at the footer section of our site, you will see a “Write For Us” link.