A decade or two ago it was a big thing to 'publish' your own book, to pay some vanity press tens of thousands of dollars for the honor of printing your tome. Now you can do the same thing for free, well all it costs you is your blood, sweat, tears, and time, and pretty much everyone has an ebook nowadays. But I will probably never succeed as an indie author, as I just don't have the heart to guilt people into buying my books, it was bad enough selling Girl Scout cookies back in the day and who doesn't love thin mints? We had a guy in town here, about 156 years old, could barely see or walk but he had ordered a few thousand books filled with his own reminiscences some decades back and spent his retirement years waddling towards random people in public venues trying to sell his book, it got to the point people would just throw $20 at him and run for it. I don't want to be that person, poor guy! Buy my books or don't (like most sane people choose to do), no pressure. I write because I have to, not because I want to be rich (but hey, that'd be okay too) but I'm too soft-hearted to guilt people into buying stuff they don't want or need (a rather poor capitalist).
But I will say I am not impressed with Amazon as a publisher. I just got done 'publishing' 8 of my titles for print on demand, apparently I get to pay printing and shipping costs out of my royalties (a 60/40 split) which leaves me with $2 on a $16 book. I don't like their non-KDP ebook options either, I can't list anything for free and get 35% royalties to boot and if you go KDP you can't publish with anyone else. I have 'published' with Smashwords for years, though their 'meat grinder' conversion system drives me batty on long books (the hyperlinks don't work), which is why I have some double published with direct2digital on my 'box sets.' I love the flexibility and options on Smashwords, draft2digital prints nice books but the interface is a little clunky, and amazon has the market reach (though I'm sure my books are priority 0 for being seen by anybody unless I pay for the privilege), so I'm stuck publishing in three different venues. I'd best stick to inoculating bovines for a living!
But I have a book, or 8, in print, yay! I'm going to purchase an author copy and I'll let you know on quality. So if you like real books, your wait is over (not that anyone likely cares!). It was kind of interesting figuring out the differences in publishing for print vs ebook, but it isn't rocket science so yes, even I can do it, maybe you too?
A note on cookbooks: I did do the cookbook hardcover, but only had 47 pages and it requires 75 minimum, so if you notice large fonts and extra front material, there you go.
