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Self publishing can actually cost you little or nothing! In fact, if you*re paying to self-publish your book, you*re missing out on an incredibly valuable resource to make your book a winner.

Ever heard of product placement in movies? The star walks into the kitchen, opens the refrigerator and pulls out a can of coke. The concept had it's early beginnings when E.T. was lured from his hiding place with Reece's Pieces. And it reached its zenith in the movie Castaway (the whole film could have been seen as a subtle infomercial for FedEx). Corporations pay money for that sort of stuff. And you can understand why. It's the equivalent of an endorsement of the product by the star or the movie itself.

How can you do that with your self-published book? It's not difficult. I know one author who wrote a book on business etiquette and mentioned several specific business machines. Before she self published the book, she went to the manufacturer, let the director of marketing know about the product placement and asked if they*d like to sponsor the publication of the book. They did.

Another author wrote a romance that took place on a wonderful Caribbean island nation. She sent the manuscript to the director of tourism and asked if they*d like to either sponsor the publication of the book, or buy 3,000 copies for $10,000. They chose the later, but $10,000 underwrote the entire press run of 6,000 copies. The author got 3,000 copies of her book for free!

In each case, the author asked the sponsor or buyer for only one condition. The self-published books they received for their financial involvement could only be either given away free, or sold for the full cover price. That way, the author was never undercut on price.

Would major companies, government agencies and other large entities really want to be involved with your self-published book? Hey, if you take a look at the cost of advertising, the cost of self-publishing a book is cheap! $20,000 for a single page in a national magazine. And then you come along and give them a promotional tool that has the legitimacy and the integrity of a published book, at a price that's almost insignificant when compared to their total annual budget.

These steps will make it easy for you. Make sure your book is complete, but in manuscript form.

Make a list of 20 companies that could benefit from the topic, direction, setting, entertainment value, or information your book has.

Make one copy of your manuscript and insert specific product placement throughout the book. By product placement, I mean specific products, or specific strategies that some companies use, or locations, or whatever you think puts the idea of the product before the reader.