At the risk of alienating a lot of geeks, I have a confession to make: I used to believe that Brand Apple was too hyped up. I'm even more embarrassed to admit that this viewpoint was completely unmerited. Like many other, equally ignorant Apple critics, I had never even touched an iPod Touch, let alone owned that or any other Apple device. 

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“To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations - such is a pleasure beyond compare.”  -Kenko Yoshida-

The UK Publisher’s Association released its statistics in early May: consumer e-book sales increased by 366% in 2011. Overall digital sales grew by 54%.

The Pew Research Center found that 21% of Americans have read an e-book, and the average digital reader has read more books than non-e-book consumers.

At such an expansion rate, what hope is left for regular books?

Some of you may remember November 2008 when I put some posts up about doing the crazy phrenetic lunacy that is NanoWriMo. You had to write a 50 000 word novel in the month of November which sounded easy at the time but the pressure towards the end is tremendous as you try to complete the effort. Once I had finished it I wanted nothing to do with it. Sort of like a sickly chocolate bar that once you have finished it you don't want any more or even want to buy another one. The novel lay dormant for many months while I summoned the interest to edit it, spell check and correct as well as re-write large chunks that I was not so happy with. That took until October 2011 to do. Then it was a case of deciding the best way to get it published. Stories abound of aspirant novelists submitting their manuscripts to publishing house after publishing house in a non-stop nauseating receipt of rejection slips. I didn't fancy this and many of them want you to submit a printed as well as electrronic copy. I then decided to look at self publishing which you can do but you are putting up the money up front for the production run, distribution etc and then you need to convince the national bookshops to purchase, stock, display and promote your work. Not possible at the moment with children's education consuming most of ones income. I then decided to look at self publishing just as an e-Book available in places like the Amazon Kindle library. A quick Google search yielded a number of interesting links including Amazon with options for you to make your work available as an on demand physical item rather than just digital. You can find details here . The search also came up with some really helpful sites including this one which had a link to a stored webcast on exactly how to do it. 1 hour of my Christmas break was consumed in watching it and it really could not be simpler. I followed the steps to the letter and in less than 4 hours my book had a cover, copyright information and was being processed through the Amazon Kindle mill. The next day I had an email from Amazon stating that my work was now available in US, UK, France and Germany. For anyone wanting to get their work published, be it thick or thin, this is an easy way to do it. Of course once published you still need to do some marketing to get your work purchased so it is not a silver bullet to fame and fortune. Of course if you want to read my novel you will find it here.