Yesterday, I had lunch with “Shaders for Game Programmers and Artists” author Sebastien St-Laurent. In case you haven't heard yet, he is forming his own publishing company as he is dissatisfied with the process of publishing through a traditional publisher. All self-publishers should keep a good eye on his development. Looks like he has put some serious thought and research into this for quite some time and I am looking forward to see how well Paradoxal Press will do. If I write a book again, I will definitely look into this.
As I recently self-published Visual Studio .NET Tips and Tricks, I have learned that the biggest hurdle to self-publishing is marketing. Your book can be superb, but does not sell if you don’t invest a lot of time and money into marketing, because people simply don’t know about it. In the busy life of mine, I unfortunately don’t have the time to invest in marketing myself. Even researching on a third-party company to take care of marketing by itself can be a full-time job. Getting book reviews in magazines and other websites or blogs is even tougher than you think. There are websites that are solely dedicated to reviewing books about .NET, but even sending them free books does not guarantee placement or even mentioning. Marketing just takes a lot of effort, work, follow-up and one just have to be persuasive and diligent.
PS: My offer still holds: I'll be happy to send anyone a free copy of my book as long as you write a review about it on your website/blog/amazon/bn.com afterwards.