Writers! The world is ours!

Well, almost.

Honestly, there has never been a better time to consider independently publishing your book, be it fiction or non-fiction. Digital book sales increase every quarter. Ebook outlets expand and improve continuously. Perhaps most importantly, the taint of self-publishing as vanity press is evaporating like a powerless ghost from the past.

In fact, only two barriers remain between an author and success: doing the hard work that is required to create a work of quality and integrity, and the knowledge of what to do next. While there is no shortcut through the first one, there is a very clear and valuable roadmap to make the second extremely achievable. A self-publishing Roadmap, in fact.

Joel Friedlander, who hosts http://www.thebookdesigner.com, has created a soup-to-nuts online course appropriately entitled The Self-publisher’s Roadmap. This course offers six weeks of video instruction that is well-organized into relevant units absolutely full of support materials including articles, PDFs, links, resources, lists of contacts, interviews with key professionals, and questionnaires to guide a writer’s decision making.

It is rare that I endorse a product this freely, but I was lost as to how I would get a novel I very much believe in to potential readers, and Friedlander’s course clarified so many steps and decisions and elaborated on so many opportunities that the least I can do is share the wealth.

Go, check out http://www.selfpublishingroadmap.com, find out what’s offered, and then invest in yourself.

Christopher Ryan is author of City of Woe, available on Kindle and Nook, and in print. For more info, click here.