You have a story to tell and you need to get it published for thousands of people to read. You have decided to go down the self-publishing route but how do you go about this? Do you produce a paper version, an eBook, or do you produce both? The world of self-publishing is a confusing place but it needn't be so.

Firstly, before you can make any decisions, you need to have finished your book, so this means editing and proofreading your work so that you are ready to take the next step. You can either do this yourself or hire a professional.

You then need to decide how you want to present your book; paper copy or eBook? Once this has been decided, you can then go about achieving this yourself or again you can hire a professional. There are many companies out there who offer free or professional formatting services for both formats. So if you decide to do the whole process yourself you can use the many online tools to help you.

One good example is that of CreateSpace which is a self-publishing platform and an Amazon company. They allow you to either download their free publishing resources and book templates or you can choose to hire specialist services, including formatting, proofreading and book cover design. The book cover is an important part of marketing the book and you will need an attractive cover. However, these services cost money and if you are on a budget the free services are a good option.

Their book cover creator is very easy to choose and you have a wide range of styles, fonts and images to choose from. The actual process of creating your book, using the book template they provide, is also relatively painless. You choose the size of book and simply add your text to the formatted pages. There are also help forums which can assist you with questions. Another good service offered by them is that of converting the finished book into a Kindle version, but you have to pay for this service.

So what about self-publishing an eBook? This seems to be the most popular choice with independent authors as nearly everyone now has an eReader or smart device on which to read their books. It is also the most profitable in terms of royalties. So how is this achieved? Once again, there are many companies out there who will convert a pdf or word.doc file into an accessible eBook ready-made file, so this takes the pressure off you. You can also pay companies to help distribute your eBook. Smashwords and Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) are both extremely popular and you can easily find out on their websites how to prepare your eBook file for these platforms.

So bite the bullet and get your book published. You just need to find out what method is best for you.