The book club sale led to an auction and Pocket Books bought the North American rights two weeks later. Lip Service was released as a hardcover in September of 1999 and is being published in France, England, the Netherlands, Germany and Australia.

Which begs the question: Is e-publishing only a first step to getting a book into print?

Perhaps. Or maybe we are way beyond that issue already and the first decade of the new Millennium will prove that print is becoming passé for certain books and categories and electronic books are the new medium.

One thing is clear; the Internet is changing publishing even as you read this article.

In the last six months alone, the first e-book was sold to Hollywood.  Publisher's Weekly read an e-galley instead of an ARC in order to review a book. Barnes and Noble bought 49% of iUniverse.com, which produces print-on-demand books for just about anyone who thinks they have a book in them. And Microsoft announced the "Frankfurt E-book Festival" which will give away over $100,000 in prizes.

Obviously the old rules of publishing are changing. But what are the new rules?

Rule #1 - Make sure you have a saleable product

It used to be that if a book could not find a home at a publishing company, it usually wasn't very good. That is simply not true anymore.

The advent of the superstore bookstore, the decline of the independent book store, the mergers of so many publishing houses and the mega deals top authors get have all drastically lowered the number of new authors published each year. By as much as 50% from ten years ago.

There are far too many good manuscripts being passed over these days.  Some because they are good but not good enough. Some because they don't fit a genre. Some because they would appeal to too small an audience.  Publishers want books that can sell at least 25,000 copies.

But if you publish your own book, you can make a profit on only 3,000 copies, if you do it right and are careful.

Rule #2 - To sell, you must have an audience

Think about whom your book will appeal to. Don't just say people who read novels. Be much more specific. Women who are breast-feeding their babies.  Men who live in rentals in big cities. People who grew up on farms.  Because for every niche you can think of, you can find at least one newsgroup, e-zine, newsletter or listserve on the Web targeted to that group. And as an author, you can use all these outlets to market your novel.

The independent publisher has a myriad of options. You can go the traditional route and just print your book; you can publish only an e-book; or you can do both. I recommend publishing your own e-book and paying for a short print run of your own or doing POD (print-on-demand).

There are several reasons for my suggestion of doing both e- and print.  First, not everyone wants to read a book on their desktop or on a reading device. People still want to curl up in bed with a good novel.  Another reason is most review sources will not yet review e-books or e-galleys. Yes, Publisher's Weekly magazine just reviewed the first book via an electronic galley. And ForeWord magazine has started to review e-books. But printed copies still make a better impression when you are unknown.

One more important reason to go to print is that many of the best online bookstores require print versions of the book to offer their customers. Yes, they will sell e-books soon or sell them now on CDs. But they want to offer both.

To research yet more options start with the Midwest Book Review Bookzone and Ebookconnections.  All are invaluable research tools with links to hundreds of printers, e-publishers, POD companies, online bookstores and basically anything else the independent publisher might need.

Rule #4 - Where to sell your book

Once I had decided to print my book, I had to find a place to sell it. Regular bookstores won't give shelf space to single titles from small presses.  (Well your local bookstore might - but it's hard to get national distribution when your are self-published. Personally, I wouldn't waste my time trying to get distribution in bookstores until your book is selling really well online.) Besides, who needs regular bookstores when there are so many thriving online bookstores? The big ones are Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and Borders.com. But there are over 100 others.

Rule #5 People won't read your book if they don't know it's out there

Even though my book was in the online bookstores, there were no sales.  No one knew it was there! Even though I had submitted my website to the search engines, I wasn't getting any traffic.  Obviously, until people knew my book existed, no one would go searching for it.

Each time I got a good review from a site, e-zine or newsletter, I asked the author of the review for permission to post it to Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com. As the number of reviews grew, so did sales. One site that reviews is E-book Connections and you can send review copies to them at releaselist@e-bookconnections.com. Another site that announces new releases is Soon To Be Released.com.

Rule #7- To sell non-fiction you have to be an expert

To have a successful non-fiction book, you must either be an authority in the field you are writing about, or you must establish yourself as a new authority in that field. If the readers of your topic don't know who you are and what you've accomplished, they won't buy from you. While this can sometimes be accomplished with a well written "About the Author" chapter, it is better to get your name immersed in the communities that are interested in your topic. You must make yourself known and shout, "This is who I am and this is why you must buy my book!"

Rule #8: Books do get judged by their cover

They say it so often it's become a cliché. But how else do they judge a book they've never heard of, written by an unknown author, unless it's from the cover? I hired a designer to make my Web site sing. I hired a graphic artist to ensure the book cover would speak volumes.

I could write a book on it

Since Lip Service was released and the press hit, I've received over 500 letters from authors wanting help in "doing it themselves" on the Net. At first I answered each one personally and then I realized I should write a book about how to publish and promote a book on the Net.

It's called How to publish and promote on the Net with over 500 links. It will be available as an e-book (where the links are live) or as a print version. And yes, I self-published it with my co-author, Angela Adair-Hoy.  But after only one month online, St. Martin's Press picked it up and it will be available in January of 2001 at the same time as my next novel, In Fidelity which Pocket Books is publishing.