Trying to secure a book contract with a publisher in today’s climate is becoming increasingly difficult. However, you do not need to find a publisher to get your book read as you can now publish yourself, as an ‘independent’ author, and see your book in print. There has never been a better time.

As a self-publisher, you retain creative control of your work and can decide how and when to sell this work. The only real difficulty lies in knowing what self-publisher to approach and there are many out there who can each offer a different type of service.

So firstly what is a self-publishing company? They are sometimes referred to as print on demand publishers as what they basically do is take your print ready file of your book, which you download to them, and they print this off as a bound book as and when it is ordered, one book at a time. However, the difficulty in choosing one lies in where you want your book distributed, what type of book you want produced, and how many books you hope to sell. Here are a few of the best and most popular print on demand companies for you to take a look at.

Lulu is a perfect platform for producing novels and photo books. They can publish on your behalf and can also create eBooks from your print copy. You can publish with them using a free service or one of their paid services. You can choose your own royalties options.

CreateSpace is Amazon.com's self-publishing company and is one of the most popular print on demand options. They have an online wizard, and formatting templates that you can download which guide you easily through the process. This is ideal for the first time user. You can also design your book cover using their online tools, which helps to save you money. You also have the benefit of your book being instantly available on their Amazon sites. What is also fantastic about this service is that if you decide you want an eBook version they have a conversion service available, although you have to pay for this.

Smashwords is another popular choice and allows your eBook on all eBook platforms. However, their formatting guide is quite tricky but the benefits of perseverance mean that your book can be made available on all platforms, so it's well worth the effort if you are competent at formatting.

Finally, Blurb is fantastic if you want to publish a photography book as you can download an array of templates and formatting tools. You can also publish novels with them and, just as with the other platforms, there are no upfront costs.

So there is most definitely a wide range of self-publishing platforms out there for you to publish with. Decide if you want to publish an eBook, paperback, or both, how and who you want to distribute to, and then go for it; you have nothing to lose.