Here I am at it again, I've started writing my second book a little over one month ago. Now obviously i won't reveal what it is about yet as I'm still waiting on a decision from my publisher but it will be obviously be related to computer graphics in some form but at this point in time i have a little over 100 pages done, which should account for about 1/3 of the book. Yay! :)

Speaking of which, I've been waiting for a decision from my publisher for almost two months now. I can't believe how things move slowly with them sometimes. Apparently i barely missed the last editorial review board and now i have to wait for the next one next month. In my opinion, i think they are mostly waiting to get the sales report on my current book to see if my new book is a viable risk to them.

I myself am curious to see how sales are going. So far, I've only received one report (they are sent quarterly) and since it covered about 3 weeks after my book was released, it had only sold about 1000 copies at that time. But since it does take about 4-6 weeks for most on-line stores and regular retail stores to stock up the book, who knows what the numbers will be on the next report. It is especially hard to guage since my Amazon sales rank has been all over the place, ranging from the 8,000's to 800,000.

You may wonder why am i still working on my book since i don't have a green light from the publisher in the first place? Well I personally believe in my book idea and think that although it might not sell 50,000 copies it does have good potential and compared to most book in the field, will have a much longer shelf life. So my goal is to have the book published no matter what.

So at this point in time, in addition to writing the book itself, I've been researching "Plan B" options which include self publishing. Right now, I am looking into self-publishing avenues and am definitely considering Lightning Source (LSI) as a good prospect. They do POD (Print-on-demand) but from what i read is that they have good quality and since they are part of Ingram, it guarantees that me book will be available to most book stores and definitely listed on Amazon and such on-line stores. The reality is that many self-publishing service companies actually use LSI under the hood and I'd rather deal straight with the printer/distributor than a middlemen.

Self-publishing this route does have some consequences at least on my end. This means i will need to take care of several aspects publishing, including:

• Getting a small business setup to i appear to be an actual publisher. This shouldn't be a big deal and I'll probably just start with a sole-proprietor registered trade name. Shouldn't cost much more than 30-50$ to do so. Probably a good idea for tax purposes anyways.
• Book editing... I obviously can't do this myself as it would lead to a really bad book. So i will need to hire some contract content and tech editor to go over my content.
• The book will need layout. Well I'm sufficiently gifted to be able to do this myself, so far I've snagged a demo copy of Quark and will start meddling around with it. For now I'm just trying to figure how to use it and hopefully start preparing a template for a possible book.
• Will need to get the proper ISBN and Bar Codes for the book. So far, this seems pretty trivial and should cost me around 250-300$ for a pack of 10 ISBN's to my name. But I'll wait to see if i self-publish before i get those
• Will need to design a cover for my book. Well i can figure this one out but at this point in time, it is not a huge priority.
• Probably a bunch of other details, especially including a marketing plan. But it is obviously too early to go into this...

This leads me to some questions that needs answering...

• How much does content edit usually cost? I know tech editing is in the 2$/page range, I'd assume a CE would be in the 4-5$/page range...
• Any good on-line Quark resources for someone like me who wants to start out and get a book template setup?
• Anyone out there has personal experience with LSI and care to share their experience? Also, I've heard mixed opinions in regards to the physical quality of POD (Print-on-demand) books and was wondering if anyone had first hand experience and could give a good comparison.
• Anything i didn't think of?!?!?