Allyn asked: "I wanted to return to an earlier statement you made about self publishing. Why did you go that route with your current book? Did you use one of the companies like iUniverse.com, booklockers.com, publishamerica.com or did you create your own publishing company?"

Glad you fot in on this, Allyn. First of all we have to clarify terms. iUniverse, booklockers etc are not SELF publishing. They are subsidy publishing. You pay them--both their expenses plus some profit--to publish something for you. True SELF publishing is when you form your own company, do all the work including getting your own ISBN or that International number we were talking about on this forum a little earlier and all that other stuff. It is not impossible to do but it is a good, steep learning curve. I know most of that curve but didn't really want to spend the time--I'd rather write. And, I'd rather promote. So I chose an alternate route where I paid someone to do the work for me but the press OPERATES like self-ublishing. Star Publish doesn't take a cent from my trade paperback sales. This publisher makes her money (everybody's got to live!) up fron and on the e-book sales. This means that all my UCLA students, etc. who buy paperbacks will be buying from my distributors exactly as if I had self-published.

Why did I choose it.
A. Self-publishing is great if you are writing nonfcition with a built-in audience (like speaking tours, classes you teach, etc.) Why let even a big publisher reap all the profits when you can do can get them?
B. I needed it out FAST for my fall quarter class. STAR could do it for me in about 60 days. No one else could give me that kind of speed including if I'd done it myself (that learning curve, reseach, etc would take some time).
C. I like having full control over this kind of a book.

I'm not sure I would do this with my next novel. I do know, that even if I publish my next novel with a small press or a big press that I will still have to do all the promoting myself. I can't tell you how many sad stories I hear each week about people who have gone the agent/big pubisher route only to be verrrry disappointed with their promotion efforts and with the royalties they end up getting (and with the small--beginning author--advances!!)

Hope this helps!!