My cousin and I are thinking of publishing our book, no need to go into detail except it is a book for small children. We were thinking about getting an agent and actually publishing it until we realize how hard that would be. Could you explain each way of publishing from above and why we might want to do either. Also, would it be easier to publish it online (self-publishing) then get it published for real? Thanks in advance!

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If you self-publish then it'll be difficult to distribute your books to bookstores. They usually are snobs about self-publishing and don't usually sell self-published books. If you go that route I suggest that you go with http://iuniverse.com because they are paired up with the Barnes and Noble bookstores. So if your book is good it'll be featured in their stores. With publishing, while your book is picked up by the publisher, sometimes they won't always promote your novels, it really depends how much they believe in it, so pick a publisher who will support it and promote it. Self-publishing is still "real" publishing. Plenty of people have self-published and then gotten picked up by a publishing house. Authors like Jane Austen, James Joyce, etc..

I hate to break it to you but the children's market is the hardest one to break into. I'm going to give you the short and simple answer. Yes, it's harder to be traditionally published, but your book would be in bookstores if you did get signed and it wouldn't cost you any money. Self-publishing and e-publishing make it easier to get published, but only because of the fact that /you/ pay. ALL of the marketing is completely left up to you. So what do you think is harder: getting traditionally published or marketing a book to the entire country/world?

Regular publishers specialize in publishing. They know the markets, how to lay out a book, how to print it economically and distribute it. It can be time consuming and frustrating to send chapters off to publishers for acceptance, and there is a good chance you will never get your work published. However, if it's not accepted, it may be a sign that it's either not as good as you think it is or there is little market for it. Self-publishing allows you complete control over content, layout and can be faster. The negative is that as a writer/photographer, you probaby are not an expert in design, editing, layout or distribution. You will have a much more difficult time selling your book to bookstores and many of the big distributors will probalby not even consider it. Athough self-publish has traditionally been viewed as less legitimate, I think the nich for this market is gaining acceptance as opporutnities and technoligies are growing. I think self-publishing makes sense for niche markets where the number of potential buyers is so low, it isn't economical for the most pulishing companies, but you as the author/publisher are willing to accept this lower number for the work you will put in and because it's a niche, you have the means to market it to this audience. (trade magazines, online communities, conferences, etc.) Many self-publishing companies will sell packages where they will help you with some of the layout, design, editing, etc. For a regional photography/history book I chose to self publish with lulu. LuLu does not charge anything upfront but works mostly on comissions with some affordable packages for getting your own ISBN, marketing, etc. This makes it affordable for books with low demand, but the author must be capable of all editing, design, layout, including meeting certain specificatoins, etc. They offer little or no support in these areas. Since most of the marketing for my book is local, that wasn't as much of a concern. One draw-back I've experienced with self-publishing is that at least with color books, the printing costs are high enough that if you wish to sell to it to bookstores, the final mark up will be high enough so as to not be competetive with other similar books. The only way to sell competitively is with direct markeing where there is no retail mark up. This, however, greatly limits your potential market in most cases. Many feel self-publishing makes sense because the author can make a much larger comission. While this may be true, in most all cases, sales will be so much lower that an author won't even begin to make what they would have with a publishing company. (I've read in several places that most self-publishers sell less than 100 copies of their books.) From what you've said, to self-publsih your book doesn't make much financial sense, but if your goal is simply to have a product available that you created, there are many options out there.