When I self-published my first five books, I kept running up against what my mentor calls “unconscious incompetence.” Essentially, you don’t know what you don’t know. After helping a number of friends through the maze of self-publishing with their books, I ultimately started my own publishing company, Emerald Lake Books. The way I see it, not everyone enjoys or has the skills to clean their own homes, balance their own checkbook, grow their own food, or repair their own cars. And so that’s why house cleaners, bookkeepers, accountants, farmers, garages and mechanics became viable professions. That’s why I started my own hybrid publishing company. I was willing to dig into how to publish books successfully. It was a topic that interested me, but I realized it wasn’t something that everyone would want to dive into to the same extent I was willing to do. With publishing, there’s a middle ground between having a traditional publisher … Continue Reading