Once you’ve scheduled your writing dates, then prepare your work area. Try and have it ready before your designated time. If you have a computer, make sure printer has enough paper, and there’s a floppy disk available to save your Word files in. If you use a pen and paper instead, make sure you have them handy. Also, make sure you have enough lighting in room. You wouldn’t want to strain your eyes. Make your writing area as comfortable as you can.

Now try writing for a week. How did it feel? If you’re like me, it felt great. Not only did it feel great writing, but I quickly found out it wasn’t enough time! One does need time to get into story, to think about dialogue, to write that chapter. Sometimes you'll be so absorbed in your writing, that you may surpass hour you designated, and that’s fine if you go beyond your scheduled time (unless it affects your other activities). There will be other times when you’ll sit there doodling, trying to write something, and it won’t be easy, so you’ll probably finish quicker than allotted time.

The important thing is to write on a consistent basis. It’s similar to exercise. In order to see results, you have to do it persistently and over a long period of time. A novel can never be written in one sitting! Over course of your writing, you’ll be learning valuable skills that can only come from experience. Also, you’ll notice that more you write, easier it’ll become.

As you follow your daily writing schedule, you will show your loved ones that you are serious about your work, and more importantly, prove to yourself that you can write that novel!

I wrote my first novel in 1-½ years. Being a stay-at-home mother gave me opportunity to write during my baby’s naps, which averaged about 2-3 hours each afternoon. It is very rewarding to see your novel taking shape. If I could do it, then so can you!

1. You have total control over your book. No one is going to edit your work and take out your personal “style” or omit sections you know to be important. Gom Publishing includes copyediting with virtually all of their publishing plans, which is something I did not find with most other print-on-demand companies.

2. Your book is available for sale within 90 days or less if you assist with design. Compared to “old time” methods of publishing, even if a publisher accepts your book, it normally is not available for sale for almost a year or later. The whole world could change in that length of time and you would still have to wait a year or more before you got paid for your hard work.

3. You can make up to 50% for every book you sell. Compare this to a publisher who only pays writer an 8% to 10% commission. This means that you can set up a web page to sell your book, take orders and purchase amount of books your need to fill orders at a 50% discount from print-on-demand publisher. Gom Publishing offers a 55% discount, which increases your profits even more. This option is not possible with standard publishers who purchase exclusive rights from a writer, thus not allowing writer to sell their books on their own.

4. Print-on-demand publishers also build excellent marketing benefits into their basic prices. These marketing benefits include: (a) assignment of an ISBN number; (b) ISBN bar code printed on book cover; (c) Library of Congress cataloging and registration; and (d) automatic listing on world’s largest bookstores: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waldenbooks and Borders. I found with Gom Publishing that they even have programs to distribute your book through third party distributors, sales reps, and even offer publicist services. All you have to do is help in promotion by directing people to you book on these websites. The credit card orders are processed for you, books are shipped to your customers and you receive a monthly commission check.

Of course there are many more benefits to print-on-demand publishing than four I listed above, but I am sure you can begin to see benefits for yourself. However, even though print-on-demand publishing has many “pros,” there are some “cons” that you might want to consider. One of those “cons” is how established publishing community views print-on-demand books. They view them as “vanity” publications and booksellers may be reluctant to deal with them. Trade journals like Publishers Weekly and Kirkus also do not like to deal with print-on-demand published books and magazines and newspapers shy away from them also.

Why are publishers who are located in high-traffic media biased against print-on-demand publishing? Because they know author had total control over book and it did not go through standard editing process. So what? In my opinion, media makes a great deal of money from writers and since print-on-demand technology does not provide them with this extra revenue print-on-demand publishing leaves a “bad taste” in their mouths. They tell their employees that print-on-demand publishing is not professional behavior, when truth of matter is that print-on-demand publishing is taking money out of their pockets. The “biggies” cannot reveal their true motive, so they do “human” thing and create as much bad publicity for print-on-demand industry that they can then use leverage of other “biggies” like themselves to keep everyone’s pockets padded with green stuff.

So unless you plan to write a book that you expect to be interviewed on BookTV or Larry King Live about, I suggest you check out print-on-demand publishing. Below are some print-on-demand publishers you may want to consider and compare prices:

1. Gom Publishing, http://www.gompublishing.com 2. Graphico Publishing, http://www.graphicopublishing.com 3. Author House, http://www.authorhouse.com/ 4. BlitzPrint, http://www.blitzprint.com/ 5. Instant Publisher, http://www.instantpublisher.com/

Or, go to any search engine and type in search words “print-on-demand publishing” and start shopping. I chose Gom Publishing to publish my book. The total cost was less than $600 and I made this money back almost immediately.

If are a first time writer or even published, you need to check out benefits for your work by utilizing print-on-demand publishing. At least you now have more options available to you and perhaps one day, writers will be less dependent on publishers and can take control over their own products.