Writing isn't the greatest challenge for most authors: believe it or not, it's marketing. The reason is, because so often authors tend to be introverted and insular, extroverted activities like marketing and promotion makes them extremely uncomfortable. It is disheartening to see writers put so much of themselves into a project, and then lose their enthusiasm when readers don't jump at their publications. Some even become seriously offended and put off that their work was "wanted" immediately.

These days, these days you can make marking a lot easier by finding activities that capitalize and focus on your existing natural talents, and that you quite possibly already enjoy. Like blogging and tweeting, for instance—getting active in the blogosphere both in terms of writing your own blogs and commenting on the blogs of others—provides great leverage with your interaction with potential readers. Blogging platforms are not necessarily for the “tech-savy”: they are both simple and straightforward. What does one write about? There are a couple subjects that come to mind: write about writing, or what you are currently working on, or maybe some aspect of your book that you’ve seen mentioned in the news and bringing attention on how you’ve dealt with it in your book.

Conventional wisdom tells you it’s impossible to make money from writing but here’s something you don’t hear every day: You Can. Not only that, but a lot of so-so writers out there are actually profiting from their work and the reason some are getting it wrong is because

a) They lack appropriate training

b) They just don’t want it badly enough

c) They have unrealistic expectations and are living beyond their means

It’s important to realize that your articles won’t necessarily sell the moment you write them and on average, you need to resend them roughly three to four times before they are accepted for publication. In some cases you won’t even hear back from the publisher until at least three months, so that’s nine months (to three different magazines) right there. Should you be lucky enough to get published, it takes another 3-6 months of waiting to get paid. So it’s safe to say that magazines on their own aren’t enough of an income stream.

Here’s a brilliant video done by Dorling Kindersley Books on the future of publishing.

Author Solutions, who owns now owns many of the vanity publishing houses including AuthorHouse, iUniverse, Trafford, Wordclay and Xlibris has announced their partnership with Writer’s Digest.

This announcement has sparked a lot discussions and negative comments towards Writer’s Digest and why a 90 year old respected company like Writer’s Digest would get involved with a not so resected company like Author Solutions.

You can find the full press release along with some great commentary at Michael N. Marcus blog: Book Making