In my last post I addressed the “how do I get published” question, when I then reviewed the various forms of publishing. Cathy’s follow up question is: How do I become a self publisher?

It’s probably easier than you think. And I’ll also give the standard disclaimer that I’m not an attorney, though I do know some good ones if you need a referral!

You need to set up a publishing company. Pick a good name for your company (you need an actual business name, don’t just use your own name, unless you want to name your business “Lauren Hidden Publishing Co.” Do some research to see if there are any other publishing companies with that name. You want to be unique!

Create a logo (or hire someone else to do it) for your company. You’ll put that on your website and on your books.

You need to get any business licenses and insurance. This is a good item to check with your attorney and insurance agents to see what exactly you need.

Get an EIN number (or you could use your SSN as your Tax ID number)

Register to pay state sales taxes

Buy the domain name for your company

Once you have all these beginning steps done, you’ll want to have a website, a shopping cart so people can buy your book directly from your site, and then you need to go through all the process of writing, printing, marketing, and distributing your book. But hopefully this post gave you an overview of the business side of self publishing.

I welcome any input or additional questions!