The 'cheap' way?? Published THEY pay; Self-pub, YOU pay. And there is no easy way.
I've gone both ways.[Christian books] My first book was published after the first two rejections.
My second book, after Crossway finally returned the ms, I went the self=pub route.
Just a note on my experiences with this:
I think being published as an unknown is even harder today. When I first sent my ms out, things were getting a lot harder. In my case, I had sent it to Herald Press, a small but well known Christian publisher. The editor tried to encourage me that I 'almost' made it [they took a well known seminary prof's ms instead, Ron Sider]They only published about 30 books a year but were getting several hundred mss.
Crossway no longer accepts mss. You have to have an agent or something
NOTE: There is a Christian website for writers to display their work and publishers supposedly look at it and contact you if interested...not sure of the name...
ON self-publishing, there are two routes: 1) POD print-on-demand and 2) printing cartons of books. [I've done it both ways]
1) has the advantage of no inventory and low costs if you just go with a basic package. I went with Xulon on my second book [would not recommend]and it was more expensive; they get your book listed on Amazon etc; put you in a book catalogue; display their books at the Chrisian Book Seller's Assoc. etc, ...sounds good...but, really, this is all money down the drain if you are not known.
You can go direct to Lightning Source or Lulu, etc and just do the POD;
2) Finding a printer [always shop around a LOT; big difference in prices]
You have book inventory BUT if you are going to sell books; most are going to be sold by you to begin with so you need books on hand. You can have them on hand the POD route, but at about double the cost per copy. BUT that's not all bad 'cause you don't get stuck with a lot of books that don't sell.
Book printing costs drop substantially at 1000 copies and above. But that is a BIG expense. The avg author sells a couple hundred. Evangel Press in Indiana was the best deal that I found.
In the end, whatever route you take, sales depend a lot on your own promotion.
, rewrites to accomplish some radical changes in perspective. It's been a long haul -- and not over yet.
