I’m not much of a basketball fan in general, however I do pay attention to the Blue Jays come tourney time.

I’m in a quandry this year though as my brother, whom I mentioned previously used to be a sports writer out west, is now the assistant SID for Nevada. So I’ll be rocking the Wolfpack coaching staff shirt he sent me on Friday.

Rest assured, I’ll be back in Husker red for the Nebraska/Nevada game Labor Day Weekend.

I also keep tabs on Blue Jay baseball as much as I do Husker baseball – which is usually quite a bit come April/May.

I’ve learned a lot about it from this little adventure. First, get a realistic idea of the potential market for your book. If it’s small, consider self-publishing. You’ll get to have full control over your project and you’ll end up with a nice memento for friends and family. If you see it having a large market, send a querry letter to a publisher and see what happens. Getting your foot in the door as an unknown author at a traditional publishing house (Scholasic, Little-Brown, etc) is very tough unless you can really blow them away with your idea. There are plenty of books that can help you with this step.

Another possiblity which I’m currently looking into is becoming my own publisher. Simply incorporate yourself as a company, follow some coaching and advice, and you’ll end up with all the benefits of self-publishing with the benefits of having your own business. There’s a company in Omaha called Conscierge Marketing (just type in http://www.lisapelto.com) and talk with Lisa Pelto. Helping people become their own publisher is what she specializes in.

There are plusses and minuses to every scenario. The plus of a traditional publisher is there’s no out of pocket expenses. The minuses are that you lose a great deal of creative control over the product and you’ll recieve a lot less per book, even though they also pay for the marketing and publicity that should help it sell more. They will do a lot of work for you and your book becuase they’re invested in it, but you don’t see a lot of profit unless it really takes off.

The plus of self publishing through a company like AuthorHouse is that you are in complete control, you maintain ownership and copyright, they are hooked up with the major distributors who can get your book listed in Barnes and Noble and Amazon, and you make a bit more per book than you would though a traditional publisher. The down side is that these Print-On-Demand companies (or POD’s) are generally not as respected among bookstores because they will print pretty much anything and quality is never a gurantee. Also, the price of the book in the end will generally be quite a bit higher than you would like. And, don’t forget that with a POD house, you pay for everything up front. Most of these places can do anything you’d like from editing to marketing, but you’re going to pay for it, and sometimes you may pay more for their service than the product itself (for example: copyright registration is $30 if you do it yourself. AuthorHouse charges $150).

If you become your own publisher, you once again pay for everything up front and you have to do all the work, but once you have a book that you’re proud of, there’s no middle men. You print at a fraction of the previous cost, you can lower the selling price of the book drastically to make it more customer-friendly, and you keep just as much if not more of the profit. It’s a bigger initial investment, but it pays off much quicker.

Best of luck with your project. I hope this information was helpful! Feel free to email any further questions to huskerstories@hotmail.com.