When you have decided to make that all important move of publishing your book, there are some things you should know. I am going to spell all of this out for you and save you tons of research. There are basically 5 ways to go when taking your life's work that you have turned into a book and having it published and available for people to buy. I am listing them here:

Lets look at all of these to see the reality of the up sides and the down sides. There are certain realities that you should know before making a decision.

The very best way to go about being published is to get a classical publisher to publish you. This is not as easy as it sounds though. Publishers are swamped with manuscripts and only have a certain amount of resources. This means that it is the seriously lucky and seriously excellent books that get chosen to be published by classical publishers. Either that or you can know someone who actually works for one of these companies and make the decisions on what manuscripts become a book with there company. You can be waiting for years and beating down the doors of every publisher you can list, and there are scores of thousands of very good writers who are still waiting.

Then there is Vanity Press. With Vanity Press you are going to be paying all of the cost and fees and whatever else goes with it. My first and last experience with any Vanity Press was when they asked me for 25,000 dollars. That is when I knew this was not for me. This may be great if you are born into very fortunate circumstances and want to learn a lot about being published and can afford to take the ride. But for most, this is simply not realistic.

P.O.D. is next. This is something that has grown only because of printing technology and what computers can do. It saves on costs for anything under 1000 books being run in any one printing, so it can be appealing. Another appealing thing about it is that it truly is Print On Demand (P O D). This means that if no orders come in then the company does not have thousands of books having to be stored away in a space they have to own just for that purpose. The bottom line to you if you have a book you really want to see available to the public and hold in your hot little hands is that is only costs a few hundred dollars to do and goes up from there. The down side of this is that you have to be able to market and gain customers yourself. Many of these companies will sell you packages that include marketing,... but i all honesty, you will do much better if you simply understand that the selling is actually up to you.

Going to a Printing company. Now this is not a bad option at all. So long as you know you are going to print off somewhere around a thousand copies at one printing and then take them home. So you want a company that does good and honest work and that is close enough to drive to so you can avoid the hundreds of pounds of shipping costs. A thousand or even 700 books is quite heavy and quite bulky. This choice is one you would have to look into if you are interested in it. Every printer is different and many use different methods of printing which of course will fluctuate when it comes to what it will cost you for the print run.

The Literary Agent is also a great way to go. Especially if you have a seriously excellent book almost written already. In many cases they will ask you to send some chapters there way and then they look through it and get back to you. If they ask you for any money,... do not walk, but run the other way and find one who is reputable.

Each of these have both more up sides and more down sides than I have mentioned here. This is to give you something serious to bite into and get a feel for. As a writer myself,... I have to say there is a certain thrill to hold your own book in your hand, and it will and does inspire you to take it all farther. You will want many people reading your book and so you will begin to think about this by holding your own book in your hand.