: Self publishing My Dad is writing a book about racism I am trying to find info for him on how to publish and who would publish he is almost done with the book however he is writing 5 books

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There are basically two kinds of self-publishing.

One is the heavy do-it-yourself route. You write the book, you format it for publication, you design the cover, you do any marketing, etc. What they do for you is physically print the book and make it available to on-line and brick-and-mortar bookstores. In practice, your book will be listed on the web sites of dozens of on-line bookstores, most notably Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Getting into brick-and-mortar bookstores is very difficult. Don't count on your book being on the shelves ANYWHERE, not unless you work very hard on marketing or have a friend who owns a bookstore.

If this is what you want to do, I think you have three major choices: Create Space, Lulu, and Lightning Source. I have worked with both Create Space and Lulu and can vouch that both live up to their promises and are reasonably easy to work with. I haven't worked with Lightning Source. Unlike CS and Lulu, LS is not primarily geared to working with independent writers, they exist to serve big publishers and just work with self-publishers as a sideline. So I understand they're more cumbersome to work with.

All of these involve only modest investment on your part up front. Depending on many details, you will probably have to put up a few hundred dollars. Not including any marketing costs, which could range from zero to ... well, to millions if you want to advertise your book on TV during the Super Bowl.

The other self-publishing route is if you just want to write the book, and then have someone else worry about laying it out, marketing, etc. There are many companies out there that do this. I cannot recommend any because I have not worked with any. This route usually requires you to pay them at least several thousand dollars for their efforts. Warning: Many people who have worked with them tell me that many of them are scams. They charge you many thousands of dollars to market your book, and then their "marketing" turns out to be that they got you listed in a catalog that you could have done yourself for twenty bucks. Etc.

If anyone else on here has had a good experience with one of these companies, please post about it.

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