New authors turning to self-publishing

The writing industry is in the middle of the largest and most far-reaching changes ever seen, with the rise of technology, e-books and the internet. Some doom-mongers are predicting the end of the printed book as we know it.

However, these rapid changes in techonology are creating opportunities for first-time authors to get their books out there into the public domain, despite a growing pile of publisher rejection letters.

The number of authors turning to self-publishing has grown dramatically in recent years, says Jeremy Thompson, managing director of Troubador, one of the UK's leading self-publishing houses. "It's part of the trend of people doing it themselves, and the internet has been a huge catalyst as authors are seeing that they don't need a publisher."

The challenge for new authors, whether self-publishing or landing a book deal with one of the publishing houses, is getting readers interested. Authors are turning to websites such as Twitter in order to whip up interest in their books, but it can be a hard slog to get noticed by readers.The sense of achievement, though, at seeing your first book in print, makes all that hard work worthwhile.

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