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It seems that a lot of people dream of getting a children's book published. Knowing that I am in the publishing business, I have had scores of people over the years tell me that they either have an idea for a great children's book or have already written one. But how many of these ever got published? Not many. A lot of them just aren't that good, but some of them may be gems. The reality is that, even though you have a good story, it is not easy to find a publisher. Some people resort to paying a company to publish their book. That isn't really a viable alternative because you have to invest a lot of money up front before you know if your book will sell.

One solution is to take advantage of modern technology and publish your book yourself. So how do you go about publishing a book that you have written? Fortunately, you have several options. With today's powerful desktop publishing tools it's not too hard to do a layout all by yourself, print the pages on a laser printer, and take it somewhere like Kinko's to be put in a generic binding. If you want the book to be personalized with the child's name and the names of friends and relatives as well, it's possible to do that with word processing software, although you have to be pretty good at using the software. One alternative would be to find someone experienced at word processing to do your layout for you on a contract basis. Another alternative would be to use a custom book service Custom Books that would take your story and illustrations, place them into a scripted format, and provide you with customized software and binding materials for making your books at home, one at a time, as your customers order them.

Once you have the production aspects of your book handled, you can decide how you're going to market your book. Thanks to the internet, it is now possible for an author to market his or her books directly to the public. You probably aren't going to get rich this way, but that's not really the point in most cases. It is satisfying to see your creation in print and to know that others are enjoying your book. By doing a little research on the web you can quickly learn how to develop a website to market your book. There are many hosting companies from which to choose, and it's surprising how little it costs to operate a small site. You can easily set up a PayPal account so your customers can pay by any means they wish to use.

Instead of just dreaming about being a published author, why not just make it happen? I recently read an inspirational poster in a classroom to this effect. It said something like this: Don't sit around and wait for your dreams to come true; instead, work hard to make them come true.