What is publishing? Publishing is taking ideas, thoughts and information, packaging the aforementioned in a manner suitable for consumption by others and then distributing that package to the general public.
Many authors wrongly believe that publishing is printing. Printing is just one step of the publishing process, as is writing the work itself.
In general, there are 3 basic steps for publishing a book:
1. Writing of the work
2. Preparation in a format acceptable for public consumption. This starts with editing the work so that it conforms to generally accepted language standards. An author’s thoughts and ideas can’t be communicated to others if those reading the work can’t understand what is being said because of misspelled or incorrectly chosen words.
Then, the edited text needs to be designed or formatted in a manner so that it can easily be read by the consumer. This is commonly known as page design and/or typesetting.
Another crucial area of this publishing step is the creation of the cover. The adage, “You can’t judge a book by its cover” is certainly true, but most consumers do not take this advice and many books are bought based upon the appeal of the cover and the “sales copy” (known as flap copy or blurb).
Additionally, administrative issues must be addressed such as obtaining an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) and a copyright for the work.
Once all these elements have been addressed, the work then needs to be morphed into a form acceptable for mass consumption. This could be paper and ink, a computer disk or CD, or in a digital format (e-book).