The momemt you stop asking questions is the moment you stop learning.

Traditional publishers own the rights to your published work. Yes, it's your work. And yes, your name graces the book's cover, but you are essentially a contract employee. The publisher owns the rights and royalties, and you negotiate with them what rights or what percentage of royalty you will receive. The 5 Big Publishing Houses are Penguin Random House, Hackette Livre, HarperCollins, MacMillian, and Simon & Schuster.

Traditional publishers assume all the financial risk. The author assumes no financial risk. Traditional publishers are in business to earn revenue and turn profits; this means they choose manuscripts based on some formula that suggests they can profit. Additionally, traditional publishers usually choose authors who have already built a consumer following. When considering new submissions from published authors, acquisition editors will probably secure a Nielsen BookScan report, which reports the number of copies a book has sold.

The average time required for traditional publishers to publish an author's manuscript is between nine months and two years after the manuscript is accepted by the publisher.

With self-publishing, an author owns 100 percent of the creative control. Subsequently, an author keeps a more significant percentage of the royalties. In conjunction with retaining a higher percentage of profits, creative control is the reason for the self-publishing route.

The ISBN is your book's social security number. An ISBN is an asset. It's either an asset for your company or one for the company that provided it. Whoever owns the ISBN is the official publisher on record. Callista Casey promotes authors own their ISBN rather than using a free option.

Purchase your ISBN from Bowker. Bowker/Identifier Services is "THE"official source to purchase ISBNs in the United States. Go to myidentifiers.com. Please know that; there is "Always" a long-term cost for free.

That depends. If you only plan on publishing one book in one format, purchasing one ISBN is the choice to make. However, if you intend to publish multiple books (different titles) or publish in multiple formats (paperback, hardcover, e-book), each format requires its own ISBN. Subsequently, as the publisher, you will be required to purchase several ISBNs.

Example: If you publish one title in three formats and purchase an ISBN for each format (required), you will spend $375 for three ISBNs, when you could have purchased 10 for $80 less.

We at Callista Casey believe that any attempt to publish your manuscript without hiring a vetted, indiscriminate editor will cost more money in the long run. We do not adopt this perspective because we provide editing; we espouse this position because years of editorial experience have proven that "exclusive" self-editing does not allow the author/editor to be unbiased when editing their work.

Manuscripts published by traditional publishers typically experience no less than five and as many as eight rounds of edits from different editors before a book is published. More often than not, a person who self-edits will have to pull their book off the shelves to correct those errors missed in self-editing. Having to remove your book from publication to correct mistakes becomes more expensive.

Editing is more than ensuring grammatical correctness. It's also about challenging and enhancing the content and delivering greater clarity. For example, proofreading ensures a word is correctly spelled; editing examines the application of word choice to warrant that those chosen words are the best ones to use.

The self-publishing cost depends upon your publishing mission. Are you that author whose pleasure is rooted in seeing your name printed on the book's cover, or is your mission to produce a book that's received as a well-respected work? There are no shortcuts in publishing a great book. It will take an investment in time, an investment in energy, and an investment in resources to include capital. The more appropriate question is how much it will cost if I choose against making the required investments.

There are places in the publishing process that you may be able to save money, but only if you possess that skill. If you do not own a designer's skill and software—I wouldn't recommend a Do It Yourself book cover; doing so will cause your book to appear amateurish.

If you choose shortcuts and utilized generic means like a pre-made book cover, you can publish a book for less than $1,000. If, however, you decide to publish a book that possesses the potential to elevate your profile as a subject-matter expert, it's going to be hard to publish a well-respected work for less than $2,000. Whatever you choose— the choice is yours. Whatever your choice, it will cost.