So, now that I’m working on my novel again (geez, that sounds so sophomore English Lit pretentious, doesn’t it?), and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, I’ve started to investigate the minor detail of “How the heck do you get a novel published?”

Back in the dark ages, when I was first trying to get published, it was pretty simple. You really had two options. You either sent your manuscript off to a publishing house and hoped for the best, or you engaged a “Vanity Press” outfit who printed them for you at your expense. And when I say “expense” I’m not kidding. Vanity Press printings of a self-published book could run into the tens of thousands of dollars.

As with so much else in the world, things have changed. There are now several options if you want to become a “published author” and actually SELL your finished result.

Obviously you can still go the traditional route. There is a lot to say about that route, the most important of which is that if your manuscript gets chosen out of the thousands their editors review every day, you may well be on your way to fame and fortune. If they like it they will assign an editor, arrange for cover art, help with copy editing, and perhaps even pay you an advance on the sales they anticipate. That’s still the way cool way to go.

But that is becoming less and less common these days. Publishing houses are suffering in much the same way that traditional newspapers and other media are suffering. Technology has taken the keys to the printing press and distributed them to people with the time, skill and equipment to do the same thing on a much smaller scale. The end result is that traditional publishers are publishing fewer and fewer new authors as they seek to maximize their profit margins by pushing book after book from their stable of best-selling authors. From what I read on the web, right now is perhaps the worst time EVER for a struggling new author to try to break into the ranks of best-selling authors whose first book is published by a traditional publishing house.

But that’s because there are options. The question is whether the options are better for a new author or not.

Of course the Vanity Press approach is still there too, but Vanity Press outfits are no doubt being harder hit even than traditional publishers since the new means to publish really play in the same limited printing space as Vanity Press outfits have always done. But they are still around if you want to go that way.

Probably the fastest growing new publishing technique is the “Publish on Demand” technology that has sprouted up as computers, printers and computer aided binding techniques have become cheaper and cheaper every year. “Publish on Demand” or “POD” businesses typically charge an up-front fee to format and load your manuscript files into their system, and then when someone orders a book, they print it “on demand” using their high-tech publishing tools. Amazon.com has entered this in a big way lately with their “Booksurge” product. There is very little up-front cost to POD, and that means that the author generally gets a higher royalty for each book they sell compared to a traditional publishing house. It’s really pretty simple to do this, all you have to do is generate your manuscript in the proper file formats, upload them to the POD website, and pay them the money they want to put your book in their catalog. Once that is done the author can create a link from an e-commerce site and when an order is placed, the book is printed, bound and shipped.

Another option is to “self-publish” your book. This means you have to do all the things the POD company does. Believe it or not, you can actually do this. Or if not, you can find other people who have figured out how to self-publish and work with them. Self-publishing is exactly that. You do the printing, binding and shipping yourself. Like this guy:

Or you can just create an eBook and forget the whole paper part of the process.

Or you can do eBook downloads and have the paper book for folks who prefer paper.