Today is  a celebration day, because my new book, The Second Mouse Gets the Cheese: How to Avoid the Traps of Self-Publishing is now available on Amazon. CreateSpace continues to surprise me with the speed at which they fulfill their obligations. To whet your appetite, here is a snippet taken from Chapter 2: "View Publishing as a Business."

Start Thinking Like a Business Owner

It’s one thing to decide you’ll self-publish your new book. It’s quite another to take all the steps necessary to become a publisher. Here’s the point you must understand: publishing a book starts long before the book is written. Publishing is a business, not an afterthought. So establishing a business was my first step.

A business needs a definition and a name. I started with the name, something I could use as a publishing imprint on my books. I didn’t want anything that would identify me too closely—not my name or a street address, nothing too cutesy, but something that would lend itself to a neat little logo. After coming up with several ideas, only to discover by way of a Google search that the name was already being used, I looked around the room where I was sitting and realized that all four of my cats were there keeping me company. My first thought was, “This is like living in a cat house.” Then, realizing the unfortunate connotations of that word, I switched to German, coming up with Katzenhaus Books and a simple black cat silhouette as a logo.

Next I asked myself what I wanted this business to do. The answer was fairly straightforward. Katzenhaus Books would produce, publish, promote, and sell one or more books of original historical fiction. It would remain flexible enough to expand into other book types. Perhaps eventually it would be able to offer similar services or advice to other writers who were seeking independent publishing choices.

Any business needs capital and a financial plan. During my academic career, I had relied on research grants to support the writing process, a publishing contract to pay production costs, and a publisher to bear the burdens of advertising and distribution. All I had to do was write. Now, all those expenses came back to me. I started my financial analysis by comparing several years of our living expenses against our income to discover how much discretionary income I had to play with. After deciding how much I could afford to risk on this venture, I did some research on self- publishing companies to estimate the total cost of a typical book. What I discovered was a wide range of offers, depending on how much help I was going to need.

Order your copy now and read the rest of this article in Chapter 2 of The Second Mouse Gets the Cheese. Note: If you have a special order, want a mouse bookmark, or would like an autographed copy, you can also order the book from this website.