Here is a summary of my experience of self-publishing from a country which has an emerging economy (Malaysia). Even from there, today anybody can stand up and publish to the world his or her ideas. All it takes is time and a really not a lot of money.
Obviously there is no shortcut to the creative work of producing the book, manifesto or whatever you want to spread. You still need to get the rights to the material you want to use (pictures…) and possibly get an editor for an independent review of the text.
Then, for anything between 0 and 50$/year you can have your website and blog up and running, publishing to the world, interacting with the world.
For around 70$ you can have an agreement with LightningSource, the Print-on-Demand leader, send the electronic files of the book over and in less than one month, be present on all the electronic bookshops around. You can touch easily the developed countries, and anybody worldwide willing to pay for having the books sent.
In Malaysia I found it better to go the traditional way of distributing my book, by printing a number and letting distributors put them in bookshops. That requires a bit more capital upfront – say 2,000$ for printing 500 books. Still that’s quite affordable, but less easy to come with.
In summary – it is not so difficult to publish your ideas. How come there are still some traditional publishing companies around?
