Be it publishing or self-publishing, this is where it all begins. It’s about your work, your craft, your words.

You need to develop your skills as a writer, you need to write, and –read. You need to be prepared to seek constructive criticism, and usually you’ll need to be prepared to draft and re-draft your work to make it speak to people in the way you’d always intended.

It’s a lonely business being a writer, hard work too. But it’s highly creative – creativity is enjoyable. Hopefully, you'll find a few like minds along the way, and some encouragement to persist with your writing.

This is the result of all that writing and re-writing; a body of written work that you’d be happy to see go to publication. At least, this will be the basis for your submission to Agents and / or Publishers, so you’ll need to ensure that the three chapters (around 40 pages) you intend submitting are as highly polished as you can manage.

When applying to an Agent or Publisher the best advice is to submit in the form they’d most prefer, some research may be necessary to determine exactly what this is. In general, send a covering letter, keep it brief, describe your book, yourself / relevant experience and why your work should be published. Include a synopsis, along with your three or so example chapters. Follow this link to find more advice on submission for publication.

It’s also worth noting that one of the benefits of finding a reputable Agent or being accepted by a Publisher, is that the cost of any further work required to finalise you manuscript is likely to be borne by them.

An Agent is optional but could prove invaluable in working on your behalf to get your work noticed.

A good agent won’t ask you to pay them anything. They’ll get their share when you get yours as a percentage of your cut from the publisher. So beware, avoid any Tom, Diane or Howard posing as a literary agent; seek references or trusted recommendations.

To acquire an agent, you may need to put more than your words to the test. They’re likely to want to know that you’re able to write in the round, so to speak, that you’re going to be worth investing in as a producer of work that can be sold. Your ability to write is their commission after all.

A good draft manuscript will always be enough (eventually) but a CV that shows you’ve been building up to this moment will also help to prove your commitment to a prospective agent. If you and your work are accepted, depending on how well your manuscript has been prepared to date, the agent will be able to call on expert help to finalise your manuscript (at no extra cost to you, of course).

You may have noticed that along the path to traditional publishing, things have been moving from art and creativity to sales and product. Publishing is a business, and not necessarily a particularly profitable one. Those of us, who do buy books, tend to buy a narrow range by authors we’ve heard of.

Your being new to the book scene means that investing in your work is a risk for any publisher. They are going to pay you (your agent), pay to produce your book, pay to distribute and market it, the intention being to make their money back on their proportion of the sales -assuming it sells well.

So, for the publisher, your book is a product and you are part of its unique selling proposition. They’re thinking of target audience, competition, marketing options and potential; will it sell (oh and of course, they’re thinking about you).

Marketing approach and spend is going to be a matter of how much to pay for what the Publisher’s likely to get back. Are you known, topical, controversial? Is your book likely to sell a lot or a little?

The retailer is caught between promoting every title in store and the practical 80 / 20 rule. 20 percent (probably less) or what they have in stock, is going to account for 80 percent (probably more) of their sales. So guess what they’re likely to do –focus on the 20 percent. They’d be happy to have your book centre stage in their store if it was going to sell a hundred copies a day but if they gave it one day and it sold one copy, they’d have lost ninety nine sales of the best seller.

What’s more, what they don’t sell within good time will be returned to the Publisher or Distributor, at the Publisher’s cost. Because, you can’t afford to take up valuable retail space with books that don’t sell.

Of course, this is all different for the online book stores, they only have virtual space to clutter. All the same, they’re not keen to give their most popular web space (pages) and advertising budgets, over to slow-sellers.

When you set out to write your novel or discover by accident that you’re on your way to creating a book, you may not have given much consideration to publication. You just want to, need to, love to write. You may, of course, be mindful of the fame, the fortune and earning a living from your writing. Either way, it’s a hard, lonely and time-consuming passion, as you probably already know.

So why go for the self-publishing route? Practicality for one thing, the vast majority of submissions will simply never get through an Agent or Publisher's narrow gates of submission. Think about it like this, for every 100 books submitted, less than 1 stands any chance – there are just too many being submitted, and that’s before you get to issues such as:

Is the material being sent suitable for the particular Publisher
Has the manuscript been submitted in an appropriate way
And is it of high enough quality
Is the subject matter of interest to the publisher
Is there a perceived market for the work of any unknown author
And, somewhere in there, the all important factor, yes, the actual quality of the writing itself.

By contrast you need to be realistic, as self-publishing can mean taking on all the steps through to retail, and this is about much more than being a great writer.

Still, sticking with the basics – the writing – the foundations of good writing are: developing your skills as a writer, practicing your writing, and reading widely; think of it as studying your craft. You’ll need to be prepared to seek constructive criticism, and you’ll need to draft and re-draft your work to make it speak to people in the way you’d always intended.

Keep your spirits up, you can always find encouragement, people love people that write; just tell them, 'hey I’m writing a book at the moment,' and they’ll be all ears (smile).

When you have your manuscript, the result of all that writing and re-writing, you’re ready to publish.

However, remember, quality control is more not less important when self-publishing. I’ve seen many a poorly drafted, presented and flawed manuscript destined for self-publication, and given the odds you’re up against, one thing you can’t afford is a confused, rambling, mistake riddled draft, posing as a print ready manuscript.

You’ll need to self-edit or pay for proofing and editorial assistance, each of which is expensive in time or money – but essential.

When you do finally have a manuscript ready for publication – this may be several months after originally completing the book, due to re-drafting and editing – you need to be confident that it is truly ready for publication; your name, reputation and the book's success depend on it.

Self-publishing means taking on the responsibilities of the writer, Agent, Publisher and Marketing department. You may have previously wondered, who’s going to buy my book? The answer being, the people you successfully target it at.

Here are some ideas:
Summarise those aspects of the book that deal with particular subjects that will appeal to people. Ask yourself, who’s going to be interested in these subjects?

Make a list of the individuals or groups that these subjects are likely to appeal to – this will form your key market audience.

For each group, work out at least five ways to communicate your message. Select a number of these options and get to work getting the 'messages of your book' across.

Summarise the ways in which topics (of interest to others) in your book are like or opposite to your own views.

List these views, differences, reflections, their shades and contrasts.

List ways you can get yourself heard talking about or discussing these issues in relation to your book. Select a number of these options and get to work 'getting you, your book and related subjects' out-there and discussed.

Seek out reading, writing, local media places and spaces, along with those who speak or write on the issues and topics covered by your book.

See if you can persuade those who have a following to review your book – these reviews will prove useful when promoting and advertising your work.

Offer to attend local reading groups to speak about you as an author and your book as a body of work.

Get friends, family and well wishers to do their best to promote on your behalf.

If this sounds like hard work, it is, but you do need to think carefully about these aspects when choosing to self-publish. Those who do read, read what they know about – if you can’t get you and your book known about -it won’t get read.

Just how are you going to get your manuscript into forms that can be read by your audience?

Here you will need help; be it from a conventional printer or an electronic or web-based self-publisher. Research the options available to you.

Think about how you want to get your book to market, how you want to sell your book and the fit between your desired approach and that being offered. Make a list of what’s good and bad about each option, and eliminate those avenues which don’t suit, demand too much work on your part or will cost too much.

This may be the self-publishing organisation you’ve chosen to create your (as an electronic or printed) book. It may be a local bookstore or chain you’ve persuaded to stock your publication. It may be you, selling at a book fair, to reading groups or other selected audiences.

What ever the retail outlet or outlets, you need to remember the link between your marketing, distribution and sales. If you generate interest in your book, you want to make sure it’s readily available for people to buy; if possible you should give them some options, make it as easy as possible for them to get hold of your book. By the same token, if you’re going to be dealing with pre-printed stock (boxes of your book, stored until sold), don’t print more than you think you can sell. A pile of books in a box is just like keeping a pile of bank notes under your mattress – money doesn’t accumulate value unless it’s invested. Speaking of which, the costs of self-publishing need to be carefully worked out from the beginning. Be realistic when setting your budget and manage your spend carefully throughout the process.