This depends upon whether you want your book to sell commercially and be stocked by local and regional bookstores. Tightly targeted nonfiction books are the best for self-publishing and commercial distribution These are written by authors who are experts in their field and are familiar with the target audience for their books. It can be difficult to find a traditional publisher to accept a book that has a small target audience. This makes self-publishing the best answer for this kind of book.

Books for which the author has a “built-in” market and do not require a commercial distribution are ideal for self-publishing. Books written for organizations — manuals, reports, sales or related items — book you publish to sell yourself through direct mail, through E-Bay, your own internet site, or in flea markets, are also ideal.

If you regularly speak or teach on a particular topic you can self-publish books and materials and market them through your talks or seminars. You can also use self-published items as “required text” in your classes, and If you belong to a professional organization, this can also provide you with a built-in market for any books you self-publish.

The economical way to do this is not to include the expensive ISBN number and copyright with the Library of Congress. Unless your book is to be sold in bookstores, these features are not necessary.

Self-published fiction has a low commercial success rate. Most fiction is bought through bookstores. The fiction readership is too vast and diverse to target effectively with a direct-mail campaign. Children’s books and collections of poetry are also poor candidates for self-publishers that want to sell their books commercially.

This doesn’t mean that you cannot self-publish a work of fiction, a children’s book, or a collection of poetry. It simply means that to make it commercially successful you must have an exceptional product and the willingness to make a major investment in promoting that product. if you are willing to do this then cookbooks, restaurant guides, local history books, niche publications for kids, seniors, gays, singles, and any book with a regional slant are the best books for self-publishing.

To sum up. If you are a writer of any kind of book that does not require commercial distribution — family histories, book written for specific organizations or outlets, manuals, reports and seminar materials — you would do well to self-publish. This is also true if you have a book for commercial publication, for a niche audience too small for the traditional publisher to be interested in publishing.

If you are a writer of fiction, children’s stories, or poetry and you want a reasonable financial return for your authoring efforts, then persist in your effort to find a traditional publisher to publish your work at their expense.

There are almost insurmountable problems to the self-publisher in making their book available to the public on bookstore and library shelves nationally, and this is also true for local and regional bookstores without the self-publisher’s personal involvement in publicity and promotion.

Most self-publishing authors invest their time and money for the pleasure of undertaking a tremendous challenge. It can be to fulfill a creative need; to produce books for which the author has a “built-in” market or audience; to write and publish reports or manuals for their business or company; to write better materials for seminars; or to leave a part of themselves permanently immortalized on the printed page.