Writing a book isn’t easy, and whether you’re a first-time author or someone who has written a book before, the thrill of completing that final manuscript is indescribable. Now the hopeful writer submits the manuscript and waits with bated breath to hear if there’s any chance of it being published by one of the mainstream publishing houses. Sadly, that’s just where a lot of promising authors end their careers. That first rejection letter quite often kills their hope of ever achieving their dream, even if they have faith in the quality of their manuscript.

Even the most well-known authors of today experienced the same thing. Louis L’Amour’s work was rejected no less than 200 times before a mainstream publisher finally agreed to publish one of his stories. The rest is history – L’Amour went on to sell millions of books and remains popular to this day. Beatrix Potter found that no-one would touch her first book ‘The Tale of Peter Rabbit’ – she self-published – and today her book is regarded as a children’s classic and has sold over 45 million copies.

Today, the choices an aspiring author faces are unchanged: be prepared to receive one rejection after another before finally finding someone who will condescend to publish you, or self-publish. The latter option may sound easy and with self-publishing organisations like Ottawa-based AgoraPublishing it certainly is, but this wasn’t always the case.

In the past, the author who chose to self-publish was confronted with a massively expensive process and they need to be a business-person and professional marketer as well as an author. Just getting a book in print doesn’t mean it’s going to sell. Someone has to promote it. Someone with contacts needs to hobnob with the ‘right’ people: the press, book distributers and so on. Then there’s the whole spectrum of marketing that makes the target audience aware of the book: websites, social media and YouTube promotion are all essential elements in marketing these days.

Ottawa Self-publishing organisation AgoraPublishing recognised the need for a comprehensive publishing service for those who choose the self-publishing option – and these days, it’s not only new authors that self-publish. Many established, bestselling authors have become weary of the arrogance of major publishers and choose to ‘go it alone’, but with AgroaPublishing, they’re not on their own. From manuscript evaluation to editing and from cover design to marketing, AgoraPublishing takes care of the author’s needs allowing them to do what they’re best at: writing and employing specialists to navigate the complex business of bringing a self-published book to the public’s attention.

Aspiring authors no longer need to wait for their manuscript to be rejected 200 times like Louis L’Amour did. Self-publishing has become a viable and cost-effective option for both established and new authors. No longer do self-published books language in storage in the author’s garage, they end up where they belong: in book stores where the public can judge them on their merits and according to their personal taste. This is undoubtedly good news for aspiring authors who hope to take the world by storm with their first published book.