So you’ve written your book or eBook and now you’re ready to publish it. Good for you. But now you’ve also got a problem.

How do you publish your book in the cheapest, easiest way?

Unfortunately, you’re in for a disappointment. Why? Because cheap and easy are usually mutually exclusive. Everything is a trade off — usually time for money. So if it’s easy it probably isn’t the cheapest way to go. And if it’s cheap it probably involves you doing some or all of the work.

Which is a terrible situation for a poor sod who’s trying to turn this topic into an article! So rather than try to convince you that what’s cheap is easy and what’s easy is cheap, in this article I’m going to try to explain the trade offs & choices you need to make.

So what is the easiest method of publishing your book? As far as publishing goes that has to be traditional publishing. Why? Because once you sell your book to the publisher they take it from there. They design the book cover. They design the interior. They take care of printing. They market the book to the major booksellers (sort of). In theory, all you do is sit back and count the pennies.

Cheap? Not really. You see the publisher will take 90% of the book’s price. You’ll be lucky to make a dollar on each sale! So while this is arguably the easiest method once you’ve sold to the agent and publisher… it’s the most expensive method.

So what are your other choices?

Well, you can try a vanity press. Like a traditional publisher, they take care of everything from design to production. However, once the book is printed, distribution and marketing is left up to you. And the charge is only slightly less than that of a traditional publisher if you sell all the books.

That leaves the three methods of self-publishing. And they clearly illustrate the decision and trade offs you need to make.

You see they both require you to provide camera-ready copy. That means you need to design your cover and book interior.

There are two ways you can do this. The first is to do it yourself. Which arguably is going to be the cheapest method. But if you’ve ever done it, you know that it isn’t necessarily easy.

The second method is to let someone else do it for you. Which is much easier and probably will give you a much better result! But of course — it’s going to cost.

But however you do it; it’s going to be cheaper than using a traditional publisher. And in one case, almost as easy!

Which leaves the final decision — print on demand, eBook through a bookseller or eBook on your own.

Print on Demand and an eBook through a bookseller are both easy. Take the camera-ready book and upload it. And Bam! Your book is published. However, both the printer and the bookseller expect to get paid. So they are going to take a share of your book’s selling price.

If you sell your eBook yourself you get to keep the whole sales price. Now that’s cheap! But of course, you need to upload the camera-ready book just as with the other two options. But in this case, you also need to create a website, link up with a payment processor, and then drive traffic. All of which takes time and effort.

Cheap or easy… it’s a matter of trade offs.