Congratulations! You are now a published author, thanks to the modern miracle called self-publishing. You did everything right to get it done. You hold your first book in your hands with a sense of pride and accomplishment.

Question: Now what? Answer: Marketing. Are you prepared to invest the time, money and energy required to get your book into the marketplace and actually sell a few thousand (or more) copies? In case you didn't know, now is when the real work begins.

Promoting your self-published book is a whole different ballgame than the writing part. If you decide to do the promotion yourself, you would be well advised to do your homework -- which includes lots of research. Or you may elect to have a marketing firm do it for you; keep your checkbook or credit cards handy if you choose this route.

For some perspective, let's take a look at the publishing business as it exists today. For one thing, it is not what it was just a few years ago. Not too many years ago, authors had limited choices if they wanted to get a book published. The traditional route would be to find an agent who would send your manuscript around to various publishers and take a percentage of the profit -- if any. For unknown or first-time authors, this route was (and still is) a real long shot.

Things have become even more difficult in the conventional publishing world, with only a handful of big corporations controlling the production and distribution of books. For a first-time author, the odds are even longer than they used to be. But now there is a new way to play the game: self-publishing has come into its own.

Is there any money to be made in self-publishing your book? Ask James Redfield, author of "The Celestine Prophecy," who sold copies out of his car trunk before the book clicked." Or ask Irma Rombauer, who wrote and self-published "The Joy of Cooking." Both books eventually made their authors rich and famous.

Here is a more up-close-and-personal success story. In Sedona, Arizona, where I live and work, a first-time lady author here wrote and self-published a book about caring for a parent who has Alzheimer's disease. The graphic artist who I work with on self-published books designed the book and lined the lady up with a printer.

She did the marketing herself, starting slowly, arranging a few local book signings and some local publicity. Then she made a couple of phone calls -- cold calls, with no connections and no references -- to the Phoenix affiliate of a national radio network. Because of the widespread interest in her subject matter, the network interviewed her and the interview went national.

Almost overnight the book reached the New York Times bestseller list and the book sold more than 50,000 copies -- just from one key radio interview. This kind of miracle can happen for you or any author whose subject matter is of major importance at the time the book is published. Things move very fast these days; today's hot topic could be a distant memory by tomorrow.

Writing your book is exciting, challenging, fulfilling when it is finally published. The next step, marketing, is a also a great challenge and will push you and stretch you to be even more creative.