One Author’s Printing Journey

I created an award-winning book by myself with no formal training. Such a project is not for the faint of heart.

NOTE: My book is a non-fiction work about herpetology and conservation (a niche market, to be sure). This article is not intended to promote my book.

This story is meant to clarify some of the processes that went into this project for the benefit of other aspiring self-published authors. I use my book as an illustration simply because it is the real-life basis of my own experience.

Reader photo by Mark Krist

In order to keep this story from turning into a book by itself, after a brief overview, we are going to focus on three aspects that I get the most questions about.

Those are:

• Selecting a printer,
• Fulfilling orders (the shipping process), and
• A few words about where to focus sales efforts.

Every time I mention printing and fulfilling my own books, other authors tend to pepper me with questions, so I thought I would post a run-down of my experiences.