Now it is done—that is no doubt what you felt when you reached that point in the creative process of writing your book when you knew you were fundamentally complete. But its a funny thing about books: its as if they will not let you rest 'til they see themselves in print. They will nag at you if you try to avoid publishing them! Your book knows its destiny is to be in print. Joking aside, the last thing most writers are thinking about during the creative process is publishing, but once that task is fundamentally complete, it makes sense to begin educating yourself and mapping out your publishing journey. A good place to start is understanding what your publishing options are. For a quick overview, read our blog The Three Roads to Publication Every Author Needs to Understand. If you have narrowed your choice down to self-publishing, we're glad you've found you way to our site, and we think you are lucky to have done so. We combine the two most important qualities for a publishing partner—care and expertise. We care about our authors and their books, and we care about publishing as an indelible and invaluable component to our culture and society. We come by our expertise through decades of publishing experience, first as a traditional small press, and for the last eight years as a pioneering self-publishing company.
This matters because no matter what you may have read about how simple, and easy, and possibly free self-publishing is, to publish a book is a big deal. It's like giving a speech on TV to thousands or millions of people, it's a huge personal and public exposure. If you have begun your research or to think on book publishing, you have probably already noted that publishing is a very different knowledge and skill set, a different way altogether of thinking about your book. Whereas while writing you are more or less inside your work, here, the task is about preparing your book to be received by others, and the attention is necessarily on meeting the standards of those others, the booksellers, the readers, the reviewers. Astute publishing can greatly optimize your odds of recognition in the literary and commercial marketplace while bad publishing can harm the chances of even the best books. If you think it makes sense to publish with a company committed to excellence in the publishing arts, you couldn't find a better home for your book(s) than Epigraph.
