I have plenty of experience in publishing. I'm the author of 12 books, including two New York Times bestsellers. The most recent of my 12 was self-published, and I was very pleased with the experience. I've also published five free eBooks.

I'm going to share with you what I've learned, and how you can use my experience to your advantage.

Most of what I say will have to do with eBooks, but I'll have some recommendations for print books as well.

First of all, understand that although self-publishing yields an author much higher royalty percentages, it also involves costs. You have to spend your own money on things a traditional publisher would take care of for you. The benefits are obvious – complete control over your product, and a much higher royalty rate – but we should remember that self-publishing has drawbacks, too. Yet, having released my first self-published book in 2014 after publishing 11 other books the traditional way, I am very much of the opinion that the benefits can outweigh the drawbacks.

Here's a bad reason to be skeptical of self-publishing: without the marketing muscle of a traditional publisher, authors fear, they will be on their own in getting the word out about their books.

Self-published authors certainly are on their own, it's true, and they need to be creative and energetic if they're going to promote their books. But the objection is based on a misconception: most publishers have little to no marketing arm worth speaking of, and of those that do, they expend their marketing resources very selectively. Most authors who write for a major publisher like Doubleday, for instance, are in effect left hanging out to dry. Doubleday focuses its energies on the small number of titles it expects to sell well, and everyone else is more or less in the same marketing position as the self-published author. I myself have been lucky: Random House and Regnery Publishing pushed my books hard, and I'm really grateful. But that is the exception to the rule.